Businesspeople from India

"Planning is undoubtedly necessary to ensure progress. If Nations and Peoples are finding it difficult to fulfil their own Plans, then who is going to be so presumptuous as to plan for the whole world? In these times of Cold Wars and Bamboo and Iron Curtains do we suppose one Nation will sit idly by and let another take the initiative in this respect? Even suppose the impossible does occur do you think the other Nations will accept the Plan of another with whom they are outwardly in peaceful contact?"

"This subject of Planning in the economic sphere is discussed in a separate paper. We will here deal only with the spiritual angle."

"Man is a free agent, not in many things but in all things, subject, of course, to the requirements of the Natural and the Moral Law. In fact, Man is so free that he can even defy and disobey his Creator. Man's freedom is however conditioned by rules of safety, morality etc., which counsel him that he may not do certain things. This is not however, a negation of Freedom."

"People state that the World is marching towards a prescribed goal laid down by the Creator, which means that no matter how brilliant the achievements of man may be, he can exert no influence whatever on the final result. No doubt man is a puny and insignificant creature in contrast with God, but If I were just to play a passive part like the animals, there would be no justification in endowing him with a free will and creating him to the image and likeness of His Creator. He could have been a Superior Animal only."

"Look up and below and all round and see the wonderful creations of God, not only our earth but the whole host of celestial worlds, planets, constellations etc. – many still unknown to us. See with what minute precision and order they move and are regulated. Only God could have created them. Ev all the accumulated genius of Mankind from the time of Creation through eons and eons of time and even to the end of existence, were all pooled together, yet it would not be able to evolve even a fraction of this order. God only could do so, and without him it would be utter chaos."

"So again, if the goal is already prescribed, none of the Plans proposed by man could be of any avail. Then why Plan? This is a cul-de-sac, but fortunately there is a way out. Man has to Plan but his Planning must be in conformity with God's Will."

"Some one has said, 'Through struggle and suffering man can pass from the freedom to choose j or evil to the higher freedom that abides in the steadfastly chosen good." And again the "Gita" in ( II Ver. 27 states that our existence is brief and death is certain and that our human dignity requin to accept pain and suffering for the sake of the right."

"Suffering is an excellent teacher, and Aeschylus says, "We learn by sufferings. "We are easily] up; sufferings keep us humble. We easily turn to worldly things. Sufferings make us turn to ( love ourselves; sufferings teach us to love God.""

"On grounds of sheer character formation, the patient endurance of pain brings out in a man ( that enhance and ennoble his character. There is no finer man than a man who 'can take ft'J self-sacrificing care of invalids, of the sick, of the aged, is one of the most refining factors in the\ realm of human experience. Thoroughbreds don't cry and pain can be a blessed thing"

"Remember that sufferings like medals have also a reverse side and ponder over the words of blind Helen Keller" Although the world is full of sufferings, it is full of the overcoming of it.""

"The state of affairs in other Countries, which claim to be more highly advanced and progressive, is much worse. There it is stated that no man or woman approaches Marriage as a virgin. This is the direct result of provocative publicity. The case of the male is perhaps worse, for he boasts he cannot even recollect the number or wild oats he has sown and which is considered as a Passport to manhood (sic). Others again have disgraced their humanity in disgusting unnatural offences, which they are now trying to make their Governments legalise, and finally others again are subject to the Oedipus complex."

"This naturally leads us to the subject to Continence. Our soi-disant manly man with a false sneer of bravado and utter lack of stability considers that Continence is not possible, and like the ostrich tries to hide from the truth. For not only is Continence possible but it is practiced with brilliant success, voluntarily, by hundreds and hundreds of men and women in all walks of life and by all castes and creeds. (Please note the stress on the word voluntarily.) But its attainment needs courage and determination of the highest degree and which is naturally out of the reach of our flabby indolent moderns, who succumb to the slightest temptation and want to drag everyone down to their own low moral levels."

"Let us delve a little deeper into the matter of Income Tax. The long-suffering Public are blamed and where discovered heavily penalised for submitting wrong returns. No doubt there are many black sheep, as in all other walks of life, who deliberately do so, but, however, it is true that most of those who adopt this unsavory practice have been forced to do so. Let us consider what happens."

"The party first makes a correct return to the best of his ability but is considered to be a simpleton and fool. His word or explanations are not accepted or are looked upon with suspicion by the Assessing Authority, who may be his inferior perhaps in status. Arbitrary and unwarranted deductions are made and the poor party is unfairly over-assessed without hope of getting any proper relief. If he appeals the Superior Officer supports his subordinate and it may take years, expense and the ruling of a High Court to see that Justice is done. So what can be the result in such a case? At the next encounter you may be sure the party will be ready to match his skill against his instigator and to throw as many red herrings as he can on the trail. It will now require all the subtlety, knowledge and acumen of the authorities to arrive at the proper conclusion, and failure is generally the result. Lakhs of rupees of Income Tax dues remain outstanding and years of litigation follow and eventually the Tax is time-barred and non recoverable."

"Mr. Nixon, the [late] Vice-President of the U.S.A., has said that the time to lose one's temper is when it is deliberate, whilst another wiseacre has stated, "Speak when you are angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.""

"Taking an example from Nature – One of the strangest facts about bees is that as soon as they sting anyone, they are doomed to die after a little while. The sting is attached to their intestines so that when they leave it in any other body, life become impossible for the bee that has stung. This is precisely what happens when one is angry."

"Many advocate aids to check Anger; the commonest being to count ten before you start; but if not constant, you tend to turn into the man who used to count ten before he lost his temper, but later counted in two's to get there quicker."

"Of Anger the Dhamnapada says, "He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call, a real driver, other people are but holding the reins.""

"A first reading of the "Bhagwat Gita" reveals that it preaches a gospel of complete detachment. A more intensified reading confirms this opinion but reveals some really beautiful verses which require careful understanding and implementation."

"The substance of the teaching of the "Gita" is contained in Chapter XI Ver. 55, which translated reads: " He who does work for me, he who looks upon Me as his goal, he who worships me, free from attachment, he who is free from enmity to all creatures, he goes to me.""

"Human perfection is a sort of marriage between high thought and just action. This must form man's aim according to the "Gita"."

"A Sanskrit Scholar, J.W. Hauer, speaking of the central message of the "Gita" says, "We are not called to solve the meaning of life, but to find out the deed demanded by us and to work, and so by action to master the riddle of life." Whilst Sanskara says that the essential purpose of the "Gita" is to teach us a way out of bondage and not merely enjoin action."

"The safest refuge when dealing with urgent, ticklish problems is sought in shirking responsibility, in gaining time by the formation of Committees, with the requisite Sub-Committees to tackle the problem. It is the well-known practice of Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone and end by letting things alone. But this cannot last for ever. Now the secret of these Committees is that they consist of a group of men, who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done, whilst they know that the best Sub-Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!"

"Further it is mentioned that if you want to kill an idea in the world today, get a Committee working on it. Adds J.B. Hughes, "If Moses had been a Committee, the Israelites would still be in Egypt.""

"The Politician uses the language of diplomacy of which he is a master, and it consists in telling some of the truth without necessarily exhausting it. This is a most subtle and potent weapon in his well-stocked armory. For when a woman says, "no", she means "perhaps", when she says, "perhaps", she means "yes", if she says, "yes", she is no lady; but it is different with a Politician; when he says, "yes", he means "perhaps", if he says, "perhaps," he means "no", but if he says, "no", he is no politician."

"The polls are the place where Politicians claim the lime-light. They fulminate with garnished oratory, display inherent and affected charm and poise and ingenuity in tackling hecklers and evading responses to tricky questions and acquire the knack of telling an untruth with utmost conviction."

"Polls are after all places where you stand in line for a chance to decide who will spend your money, and where the Candidate stands for what people will fall for."

"Honest and peace-loving people shun the Courts and are prepared to suffer loss rather than fall into a Lawyer's clutches. However, the vagaries and inconsistencies of human nature are such that people are unwillingly dragged in and the experiences they undergo leave an indelible and nauseating impression. One of these is the flagrant and plausible manner in which clients are fleeced, and snowed under a series of documents and forms which not only puzzle them, but which are always accompanied with demands for payment. There is, of course, the Lawyer's fee, but this is accompanied with the fees of his clerk (real or imaginary), then typing charges, copying charges and numerous other innumerable heads and sub-heads. In this context it is refreshing to recall that eminent legal luminary, the late Pt. Motilal Nehru was paid Rs. 5/- as his first fee and the remuneration of Dr. John Mathai was a bunch of bananas. These latter have increased immeasurably in value and are good foreign exchange getters and it is not so easy now to slip on a banana peel!"

"In former days this maxim was displayed in Business Offices, "Call upon a Businessman, at business hours, on business only. Go about your business and thus enable him to finish his own business. This is purely a business matter." There are two reasons why some people don't mind their own business; one is that they haven't any mind and the other that they haven't any business. However, now the Businessman is plagued at all hours by a spate of visitors with no business in view, who just drop in for free information or hospitality and more often than not for contributions to all sorts of charities, often of doubtful flavour or unauthorised."

"Visson has said, "Today's profits are yesterday's good will ripened," and though friendship is no basis for Business yet Business is an excellent basis for lasting friendship. To cement this friendship the Businessman recalls the fact that the memory of quality remains long after the price is forgotten, and keeps Buskin's dictum in mind that there is nothing in this world that cannot be made a little worse and sold a little cheaper. While it is equally true that men will make a beaten path to your door to acquire a better quality article even if it be a mouse trap. Nevertheless, a man is known by the Company he floats, or the Secretaries he employs, though the latter fluctuate more than the market, especially if of the gentler sex!"

"There are some silly canards that die hard and some that should have been buried long ago such as 'Those that can, do; those as cannot, teach," or the definition of a Professor as a man whose job is to tell students how to solve the problem of life, which he himself has tried to avoid by becoming a Professor; or the more hurtful one that a Professor is a text book wired for sound."

"This vocation is sometimes termed a harried one and it is said that the abuse of School-masters was scribbled on the Pyramids long before the Monument was complete and that the general hatred and contempt for the pedagogue dates back to the very beginning of recorded things. These and other similar foolish accusations are the additional burden this class of people have to bear. Consider the gibe of that arch-cynic G.B.S., "When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else, who has no aptitude for it and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.""

"It has also been said that your Education has been a failure no matter how much it has done for you, if it has failed to open your heart. Dr. Zakir Hussain, when Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh University, said, that the aim of Education was that students should become responsible citizens and not merely bundles of styles and sophistication like articles in a furniture shop – the product now being churned out lacks even that saving grace..... The old system may have produced 'snobs' what is being spewed out now are 'slobs'. The young student in Indian Schools is being smothered under a dead weight of books and notes dealing with a host of subjects imaginable and unimaginable. Busy cramming from morning till night and repeating parrot-like that he does not understand, he is fast becoming a literate moron. Initiative, leadership and education in the real sense of the term are encouraged only in a few public Schools."

"This reminds one of the story of two eminent surgeons who were leaving the operation room, and one turned to the other and said, 'That was a close one, one inch either way and I would have been out of my speciality.""

"This brings to mind the story of the Doctor speaking tactfully, "I do not like to bring it up but the cheque you gave me has come back." Replied the patient, "I do not like to mention it either, but so did the complaint.""

"There are types and types of Specialists, and one Doctor when asked why he specialised in skin diseases, naively answered, 'There are three perfectly good reasons – my patients never get me out of bed at night, they never die and they never get well.""

"The greatest sacrifices are called for in this Profession and therefore it not only merits but demands our respect and admiration."

"To get an idea of the sacrifices entailed, listen to the words of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, "If aiding the lepers is so dear to the Missionaries, particularly the Catholic Missionaries, it is because there is no other service, which requires a greater spirit of sacrifice. Working in a leper asylum demands the highest ideals and the most perfect abnegation. The world of politics and journalism can point to few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church on the other hand, counts by the thousand, those who after the example of Father Damien have vowed themselves to the service of the lepers. It is worth inquiring into such heroism!""

"It is an illusion," says Ernest Raymond," that Bishops should be chosen for their scholarship, their administrative ability, their force of will, their social gifts or other more worldly abilities, instead of the one thing needful – their sanctiity."

"Now turning to Writers in general. The urge to write is analysed as 50% Ambition, 45% Vanity and 5% something to say. This is rather drastic and later revised by a famous Author as 80% earning a living, 10% Vanity and 10% something to say. Though both may not be acceptable to all, yet using them as norms, one can classify to some extent the written effusions one reads. William Faulkner says he writes what people will believe and for that they will pay, as even a Writer has to make money."

"One writer quite cutely remarks that his best work of fiction was his Income Tax Return."

"However, there are all kinds of Writers. Some who know only one field themselves. Next those who know two or three fields in depth, and nothing more, and thirdly the majority who know a little about many things. Lin Yutang says, "It seems to me that simplicity is almost the most difficult thing to achieve in scholarship or writing," presumably because simplicity pre-supposes digestion and also maturity."

"Again there is a trite saying that good Soldiers never think. Though this may not be true, yet it explains the cautionary advice that War is too serious a matter to be left to Soldiers and that a very good Soldier should not be in charge of the War Office. His place should be on the battle field where he is unsurpassable. Actually, "Young men don't make War, they fight them. Old men make Wars and survive them. They are immensely brave about other people's sons," says Nicholas Montsarrat. They are the ones that jest at scars, who never felt a wound."

"Old Soldiers never die, they only fade away, which has now been commuted to, they never die but only get slightly out of focus. However, the focus must be pretty sharp, for we find our retired Soldiers are in great demand and they secure ready employment in large organisations in the public and private sectors."

"If you want excellence, you must aim at perfection. It has its drawbacks but being finicky is essential."

"To lead men, you have to lead them with affection."

"His Biographer remarked: Of course, ‘Sir, you believe in excellence.' JRD Tata) retorted sharply, 'Not excellence. Perfection. You aim for perfection, you will attain excellence. If you aim for excellence, you will go lower."

"I don't want India to be an economic superpower. I want India to be a happy country."

"While I usually came back from meeting Gandhiji elated and inspired but always a bit sceptical, and from talks with Jawaharlal, fired with emotional zeal but often confused and unconvinced, meetings with Vallabhbhai were a joy from which I returned with renewed confidence in the future of our country. I have often thought that if fate had decreed that he, instead of Jawaharlal, would be the younger of the two, India would have followed a very different path and would be in better economic shape that it is today."

"I wish, I were big enough, like Einstein, to do what he did on one occasion. A hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner was organised for him to speak, and leaders of America in all fields, particularly in the field of science, were invited to hear the great man. When his turn came, he rose and said:'I've nothing to say,' and sat down. You can imagine the consternation, quite apart from the wasted cost of the dinner! Realising the frightful effect his remarks had on the audience, Einstein got up again and said: 'When I've something to say, I'll let you know.'"

"The essence of air transport is speed, and speed is unfortunately one of the most expensive commodities in the world, principally because of the disproportionate amount of the power required to achieve high speed and to lift loads thousands of feet into the air. This is strikingly illustrated by the fact that while an average cargo ship, freight train and transport aeroplane are each equipped with engines totalling about 2,500 H.P., the ship can carry a load of about 7,000 tons, the train 800 tons and the plane only two and a half tons."

"There is today hardly any country in the world outside the communist bloc which does not have a mixed economy. In fact, even countries which call themselves socialist would object to theirs not being described as a mixed economy, for it would imply that it was a totalitarian one, while countries like Germany or Japan, usually thought of as having typically free enterprise economies, would do the same; for, otherwise, it would imply that theirs was a nineteenth century laissez-faire economy."

"The Psychology of Delay. Some of the causes of delay in coming to economic decisions in our country seem to lie in the psychological realm. There is such a thing as the psychology of power which motivates people: power of control and patronage, power to delay an application, power to hold up a file, power to keep people waiting in an ante-room, all of which are consciously or subconsciously treated as symbols of prestige and hallmarks of importance."

"At the Crossroads.The effective execution of a Plan is what counts and not mere planning on paper; it is not what we put on our plate or even what we eat that provides nourishment and growth, but what we digest."

"Road to Social Justice. The first and perhaps the most important of the factors which have contributed to our failure to make real impact on poverty expressed in terms of total number who live below the poverty line has clearly been the uncontrolled growth of our population...First, we must, at all costs, make a much more earnest effort at controlling the growth of our population. As it is, we are running out of time and there is no longer any possibility of preventing it from exceeding 1,000 million souls by the end of the century."

"Dhirubhai will go one day. But Reliance's employees and shareholders will keep it afloat. Reliance is now a concept in which the Ambanis have become irrelevant."

"Give the youth a proper environment. Motivate them. Extend them the support they need. Each one of them has infinite source of energy. They will deliver."

"I dream India of becoming a great economic superpower."

"Think big, think fast. Ideas are no one's monopoly."

"I am a big believer that technology shapes mankind."

"Internet the biggest discovery after printing press."

"Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of self-reliance can be attained by making use of Internet and technology."

"Broadband and digital services will no longer be a luxury item - a scarce commodity - to be rationed amongst the privileged few,"

"My first memories are of the early '60s at mount road which was then an emerging area. We were a close-knit family and the four of us -- Dipti, Nina, Anil and I -- were left to do what we wanted. There were boundaries, of course, but within those, we were not micro-managed. Things have changed so much now. When my kids, Isha and Akash, were in the third standard, we behaved as though it was our exam."

"Our own childhood was totally different. I guess when you are left on your own, you find your true potential. I remember my father never came to our school even once. Nevertheless, he was hugely interested in our all-round development for which he did some amazing things."

"A third track running at that time, apart from academics and the fun stuff, was that my father shared with me his passion for business and entrepreneurship from very early on. Even when I was in high school, I used to spend long hours at office on weekends."

"So, these were the four components of my upbringing -- the academic stuff where I was left to myself, Mahendrabhai, my father's passion for creating Reliance and the last piece was his deep links with the family."

"And it has to be non-academic. It is easy to be with your kids and say let's do homework together. But we try to do things, beyond doing lunches and dinners. I learnt that from my father. He was a big nature lover and during our school days, we went to different places every Sunday -- we walked through the forest or had a bath in streams."

"I have turned into a big nature fan as well....I can afford it more today. These childhood influences have shaped me into what I am today."

"Even when I was doing chemical engineering, I was working almost full time for Reliance. I finished college at 2.30 pm and went straight to the office. I remember, we were raided and my father was in the US."

"When we started work on setting up a polyester filament yarn project, my chemical engineering and business school background helped me in organizing the work, creating reporting structures, motivating people... in all this, my father and Rasikbhai were two steps ahead of me."

"One of my biggest obsessions today is that senior people must give bright 25-year olds the opportunity to contribute meaningfully."

"In the journey of an entrepreneur, the most important thing is self-belief and the ability to convert that belief into reality."

"The first 200-odd people who built Patalganga with me are still around, running different businesses. It has gone into their psyche that we do things differently here. We have taken money from ordinary Indians and we are their trustees. When this is drilled into thousands of people, you automatically get performance."

"In the '80s, when I came in, the ground rules were made clear to me. 'Build this business from scratch, without taking anyone from Reliance.' That forced you to be very disciplined. I looked around and figured out in three months that this industry runs on heroes."

"Even the managers. It was all a feudal style of management. If we had accepted that style, we would not have grown. It was simply not a scalable model. Of course, the easiest thing would have been to follow it. But we had a disruptive style of management. So we said, 'we don't want people carrying their wisdom in notebooks as if it is some kind of secretive operation.'"

"We tried to create an open environment. In today's language, we created SOPs and SOCs (standard operating procedures, standard operating conditions) so that everybody was on the same page. We wanted an organisation where everybody contributes but the business is not dependent on a few individuals"

"We were clear that we had to be internationally competitive and were passionate about building competencies that were the best in the world even when the tariffs were very high. It was an obsession with me to beat the Taiwanese and the Koreans who dominated the polyester business in the '70s."

"My reference points were US companies. We were hugely influenced by large US chemical companies, especially DuPont. It was a very open company and we could take advantage of their learnings. The US is also a very open society. I could to go the US Association of Chemical Engineers and get the standards, data, etc."

"I was very focussed on building various competencies in Reliance and we were not ready to do two things at the same time. It was a big risk for us to get into IT, especially because it was hugely effort-intensive. In my language, I said we have too much soap on our body and we need to take a bath in the chemicals business."

"We got into life sciences as a defence mechanism in the late '90s"

"Then, we stumbled on human and plant biotech. We were fortunate to have some good people and decided that Reliance can build this business over 5-10 years without any great revenue pressures. In the mainstream business, there was telecom or what I call infocomm."

"We got into telecom in the '90s by bidding for cellular licences. But I felt that the real value is in the convergence of information and communication; pure communication will not deliver a sustainable value; that is why we called ourselves infocomm. It was learning a whole new domain. We brought in experts from the outside but we essentially did it with proven Reliance people."

"The US and Europe saw large players in foods by the '50s and '60s; but in India, food has always been a disorganised, fragmented value chain. We believe that India's purchasing power will be food-dominated. The first thing we need is safe to eat food that will, in turn, meet many other needs."

"We are working at putting the most modern technology in farms at Indian costs. I always say whatever the US implements in dollars we should be able to do it at exchange rate of Rs 10, then we would be globally competitive."

"We all know India has a huge competitive advantage -- we have the largest arable land, focused sunshine, sensible utilisation of water in 30% of land. The question is what should we do to make the US market -- the most difficult market in the world -- accept our produce. For that, we need traceability. It is a simple technology, which we are giving the farmers. It needs certification and verification processes -- to us it is like a process plant. You can then get the output, sort it and grade it."

"From a million people, it will benefit 10 million people. If that is what has happened in software, imagine what will happen in agriculture."

"The food market is much bigger than the software services market. And the money goes straight into the hands of millions of farmers. The spinoffs are enormous -- jobs, houses, durables, a whole new consumption boom will start in rural areas."

"The most employment-intensive industry in the world is retail and our next generation needs these jobs. India has a strategy for the next generation of doctors, engineers and biotech graduates, etc. But for the country as a whole, what we need to resolve is how to create sensible jobs for undergraduates and or those even less educated"

"We only have a superficial knowledge about the true rural India -- the power structure, how to operate in tehsils, what are their true concerns, etc. But we think we can significantly change purchasing power and how we live. That's what motivates us"

"We offer to protect their savings in a job here. If you earn $100,000 a year there, you also spend $80,000 and save $15,000-$20,000. We say, if you work for us in India, we will ensure you save $15,000 dollars a year and are part of something exciting without a loss to you."

"But this doesn't work without a scheme. If you ask me to build a power plant, I cannot give that power at 3 cents or 4 cents, unless I put up a 2000 MW project. It's the same for an airport, seaport and all the other stuff. You need to spread costs over a sensible size to keep unit costs low."

"People first want to spend money on food -- that is common across the world. The second, in India, is education. In many parts of the world, it comes way down the list of priorities. So, there is a huge opportunity."

"We have not invested well in marketing ourselves. It is partly because of my trait. I believe that if my conviction is right, I will not need to go and explain myself to anyone. I believed that ultimately everyone will figure out what you are. We are changing this approach."

"I am very bullish on India because it is really the aspiration of a billion people and ours is a county where all the billion count. There are some countries in the world where one person counts, there are some where the Politburo or 12 people count."

"The Treaty of India is that all our billion people count and they have aspirations."

"India's story is a "really a bottom-up" one and not the other-way round. We are on long-term growth trajectory and this is just not growth in terms of GDP numbers, this is really for well being of each and every Indian and that's the aspiration."

"I think that China is maintaining steady growth, it is not decelerating. Europe has found its own transition path and they will transgress through the financial system in an orderly way and it is my expectation. India has had some slow growth. But, I am very optimistic on India,"

"As my father was privileged to have witnessed in 1947, independence of India from Britain, I was privileged to have seen in 1991 India embracing economic reforms that liberated our country’s entrepreneurial energies. These two transitions set India on the path of development and had a profound on the world both political economic terms."

"The performance of Reliance shows an amazing trend when mapped against time. The inflection point was 1991. We grew exponentially, eventually becoming India’s biggest private enterprise, on the basis of freedom to compete against the best in the world."

"I believe India today is potentially poised for another even more stupendous leap on its upward trajectory. India’s relative weight in the global economy and in world affairs in general, is bound to grow for many reasons. By 2030, India is projected to overtake China as the most populous country in the world, with the third largest economy in US dollar terms. Furthermore India is a very young nation with nearly two thirds of its population below the age of thirty-five."

"For me, this is a moment of re-dedication to the values, vision and goals of my father, teacher and mentor, Dhirubhai Ambani. To lead by love, by trust, and by example, I learnt these principles from him with humility."

"Reliance will get listed on wall street because we want to benchmark ourselves with the top 100 companies of the world."

"I dream of India becoming one of four most powerful economies of the world. I believe this dream can be made a reality within our life times."

"a leader is only recognized when he can resolve all differences. My father had the veto power over all decisions and that veto power is mine. But in the last ten years, he never used his veto power. He would say, once you have fired you gun you no longer have the bullet with you...My father’s biggest legacy was his leadership. He used to say, a leader must have followers. Respect can not be demanded . I have to get others to say what I want to say."

"Mukesh is the hands-on manufacturing and operations man"

"Mukesh cut his teeth at the group’s Patalganga plant immediately after his stint at Stanford."

"Mukesh Ambani joined reliance in 1981 and imitated Reliance’s backward integration from textiles in to polyester fibres and further into petrochemicals."

"Mukesh has to his credit the direction and leading the creation of the world’s largest petroleum refinery at Jamnagar, India with a capacity of 540,000 barrels per day integrated with petrochemicals, power generation, port and related infrastructure at an investment of 25,000 crores."

"Mukesh took that vision [His father’s vision] to the next level at the beginning of India’s explosive growth in the late 1990s and 2000s and turning his father’s growing conglomerate into India’s largest company, whose taxes alone provide 5percent of all national government revenues."

"The most discussed building in Mumbai is probably the twenty –seven- story of Mukesh Ambani India’s wealthiest man and the head of Reliance Industries. Ambani’s personal wealth is estimated at just under $ 25 billion, just about a billion for each floor of his Mumbai home."

"Our assets walk out of the door each evening. We have to make sure that they come back the next morning."

"I marvel at how one role model can alter for the better the future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors."

"...entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies."

"It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place."

"Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce all our prior actions."

"I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial."

"A fixed mindset, creates a tendency to avoid challenges, to ignore useful negative feedback and leads such people to plateau early and not achieve their full potential."

"I can assert that it is this belief in learning from experience, a growth mindset, the power of chance events, and self-reflection that have helped me grow to the present."

"When, one day, you have made your mark on the world, remember that, in the ultimate analysis, we are all mere temporary custodians of the wealth we generate, whether it be financial, intellectual, or emotional. The best use of all your wealth is to share it with those less fortunate."

"I believe that we have all at some time eaten the fruit from trees that we did not plant. In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, it behooves us in turn to plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will largely benefit generations to come. I believe this is our sacred responsibility, one that I hope you will shoulder in time."

"India is a country of empty words, not action. Only repeating, 'Mera Bharat Mahaan' won't help. Learn to finish the race first in order to finish first."

"Move from apathy to action. Aim at becoming better than me. Luck will favour those who are prepared"

"As long as they (government) make businesses grow in the country, as long as we collect more taxes, as long as we use those taxes efficiently, I think the confidence will come back, every one will be very happy with whatever government is in the Centre and we will be better country."

"Students are the future of this country. Quality software engineers will carve the way ahead for becoming a software global giant."

"We have to change the mindset of our corporate leaders and, obviously, we have to raise the level of corporate governance."

"I am great admirer of China. It has shown great discipline and dedication in attacking n export markets. China is working furiously on its English-language capability and its quality control. As China become stronger, it sends a clear signal that we in India have to harder to stay ahead."

"Perhaps the biggest problem before Indian Corporates is that of the concept of ‘corporate throne’. If the company is not doing well, the old guard must make way for new."

"Respect, recognition, and reward flows out of performance."

"Humble and self-effacing, Murthy is known to fly economy class and lives in a modest home in Bangalore -- proof, say his fans, that you can combine business success with Gandhian humility."

"Murthy, [says the Time magazine], has not sold his soul for money and success. One of country’s most admired men, he is vigilant about his employees’well-being, granting stock options, building exercise facilities and spreading values as much as wealth."

"Narayana Murthy is a role model for millions of Indians. An iconic figure in the country, he is widely respected and looked up not only for his business leadership but also for his ethics and personal conduct. He represents the face of the new, resurgent India to the world."

"Narayana Murthy overcame many obstacles and demonstrated that is possible to create a world-class, values-driven company in India. Through his vision and leadership Murthy sparked a wave of innovation and entrepreneurship that changed the way we view ourselves and how the world views India."

"I am a servant to the farmers."

"Gifts can be dangerous and make a nation dependent on foreign aid. They can scuttle dairy development here."

"I had the benefit of background and infrastructure, success would have come rather easily and my independent contribution would not have been easily measurable. Here there was so much to be done - how could I not try? I had a trained butler. Mumbai was close. The Mathais were there but I would stay at the Taj for Rs 50 per night. I could afford it because in Anand I had no expenses at all. **When asked why with aristocratic background how reconciled to stay in a garage."

"We must build on the resources represented by our young professionals and by our nation’s farmers. Without their involvement, we cannot succeed. With their involvement we can not fail."

"Where you have the will you have the skill; study, search, practice application; healthy irreverence; look for the kink in the thing, be curious."

"Our laws have our mindset negative, dishonest, unproductive, obstructionist and indisciplined. [Kurien says] we must liberate our resources. Economic liberalization is aimed at liberating our material resources. Economic liberalization is aimed at liberating our material resources. We need to liberate our mental resources, viz. the mindset, from our anti-national and anti-work ethic labour laws."

"While II was looking for a good enough excuse to run away from Anand; I was befriended by Tribhuvandas Patel, the young cooperative chairman and almost without realizing it I began to share his dream of building a strong organization that would free the farmers from clutches of the middle man. In one of my weaker moments I accepted |w:Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel|Tribhuvandas’s]] suggestion that I work for the nascent Kaira Cooperative. I have never regretted that decision in my 33-year career as an employee of the farmers."

"I am glad that there are people like you in this country to do things that you"

"Dairying as Instrument of Change Kurien said. True development must be such that it brings the modernization process to the service of our majority, namely the rural poor. It must bring to these people not only the pittance which they need for their humble diet but also the means where by they can act together to obtain for themselves the benefits of modern science and organization and in that process the means whereby they can build for themselves, in every village, a society which is at peace with itself, concerned with its neighbours and able to see a bright for all its children."

"Milk is a highly perishable commodity, which is in short supply in summer and in excess supply in winter . The market can not contract and expand according to supply, therefore, you need balancing facilities. And once you have these balancing facilities, which you enable to carry forward the winter production and capture the market, procurement falls into your laps. This was the objective and methodology of Operation Flood."

"The idea of setting up the NDDB was to replicate the Anand pattern in very state, in order to promote to genuinely farmer-owned cooperatives that would procure, process and markethis prime produce."

"Operation Flood has three major achievements to its credit: making dairying India’s largest self-sustainable rural employment program; bringing India self-sufficiency in milk production; trebling the nation’s milk production within a span of two and half decades to make India the world’s largest milk producer."

"Through Operation Flood, milk has been transformed from a commodity into a brand, from insufficient production to sufficient production, from rationing to plentiful availability; from loose unhygienic milk to milk that is pure and sure, from subjugation to as symbol of farmer’s economic independence, to being the consumer’s greatest insurance policy for good health."

"Amul Dairy is a manifestation of what can happen when farmers assert themselves, fight for a cause."

"With liberalisation and globalisation, it seems to me, India's national boundaries have ceased to exist."

"I am sorry, I do not think it is a good thing, because if you have opened up this market under such terms, what it implies is that other countries can put their products into our markets. Are you aware that all those advanced countries subsidize their exports? Subsidies are as high as 65 per cent. Now if you have globalized, and the others are subsidising their exports, to what position have you exposed the Indian dairy industry? You have declared dairy products under OGL (Open General License)."

"Is the democratic form of government successful in all parts of India? But the solution to the problems of democracy is more democracy. There can be no democracy in India unless you erect a plurality of democratic structures to underpin democracy, like the village cooperative which is a people’s institution."

"Over the last 20 years India’s milk production has tripled; it has increased from 20 million tonnes per annum to 60 million tonnes per annum.... Dairying has become the largest rural employment scheme in this country. And the government has had very little to do with it, even though we are a government institution."

"Milk is the only commodity which has to be collected twice a day, every day of the year. Thus, cooperatives are the only logical system for the dairy industry. About 85% of the industry in the US, Denmark and Australia is run by cooperatives. No other system will work for milk."

"What you need is good management with farmer power. Good management gives this power the right direction and thrust. Nothing can stop the farmers then. Least of all the Multi national Companies|MNCs]]."

"I am supposed to exploit the consumer; and I will (exploit them), but not in a way that will create resentment. I have to milk the consumer. And milk them I will, but gently."

"So, Mr Kreeber, what do you think of the natives now?" Kurien told a Nestle official who had come to do business with farmers of Anand. The company had earlier refused technology help to India as it could not let "natives handle a sensitive commodity like milk"."

"He was one of the most towering Indians to live in Independent India."

"Dr Kurien was an outstanding and innovative manager and an exceptional human being. His contribution to the welfare of the farmer and agricultural production and development of the country is immeasurable. Dr Kurien was an icon of India's cooperative movement and the dairy industry."

"[Mr Kurien] engineered the white revolution in India and made India the largest milk producer of the world. He is recognised as the man behind the success of the Amul brand."

"Behind the the scenes of the fantastic success of Operation Flood is the nearly invisible skillful guding hand, vision and the brilliant mind and the unique management skill of Kurien."

"I consider Vergehese Kurien to be one of world’s great agricultural leaders of this century. This collection of his speeches, so aptly entitled "An Unfinished Dream", can help light the way for those who must carry on the battle to ensure greater food security, prosperity, and peace in the world. I am honoured to commend this book to those hunger fighters."

"Amongst the management leaders in India, Kurien is not only an icon, he is a miracle."

"We are the only ones who can harness the power of software and deliver it through devices and services that truly empower every individual and every organization. We are the only company with history and continued focus in building platforms and ecosystems that create broad opportunity."

"Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture to deliver on this core strategy. Organizations will change. Mergers and acquisitions will occur. Job responsibilities will evolve. New partnerships will be formed. Tired traditions will be questioned. Our priorities will be adjusted. New skills will be built. New ideas will be heard. New hires will be made. Processes will be simplified. And if you want to thrive at Microsoft and make a world impact, you and your team must add numerous more changes to this list that you will be enthusiastic about driving."

"We have a lot of work to do. We have 90% of PC [market] share and 14% of total device share. We get that,"

"When I think about my career, my successes are built on learning from failures."

"We will continue to be in the phone market not as defined by today's market leaders, but by what it is that we can uniquely do in what is the most ultimate mobile device."

"We need to ask ourselves not only what computers can do, but what computers should do."

"What I think needs to be done in 2018 is more dialogue around the ethics, the principles that we can use for the engineers and companies that are building AI [artificial intelligence], so that the choices we make do not cause us to create systems with bias."

"AI is going to be one of the trends that is going to be the next big shift in technology. It's going to be AI at the edge, AI in the cloud, AI as part of SaaS applications, AI as part of in fact even infrastructure. And to me, to be the leader in it, it's not enough just to sort of have AI capability that we can exercise—you also need the ability to democratize it so that every business can truly benefit from it. That to me is our identity around AI."

"Microsoft has a long history of taking a principled approach to how we live up to our mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more with technology platforms and tools, while also standing up for our enduring values and ethics."

"The biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but it's power. If you can’t do that, you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in. In fact, that is my problem."

"He’s the recommendation I made. He's the recommendation that Bill Gates made. I thought he was a candidate to replace me, which is why we moved him into his last job, which was running one of the big divisions. And I was glad he got the job, because he's done a great job...Nadella has succeeded in changing the way the financial community views the company. He’s done a good job of repositioning the company in investors' minds."

"How do you develop the subconscious of an organization?... There's no time to take decisions deep into the brain—no time to take it to the data warehouse. It has to become a reflex action. We're developing the gut."

"We had to be able to make a decision like that, without reprocessing all of our learning. So we take a small slice of information and a profile of the customer, set up a promotion, prime up the customer's history, and wait for the events. It primes up just the right amount of information in real time... [A system like that,] might not be as precise, but it would be statistically good enough. Maybe it would be wrong five percent of the time, but that's okay. It would be more like making judgment calls."

"Wikipedia biases in my entry (just as one example) which it prevents being corrected. It is re-colonizing Indians."

"India is the world largest territory, both geographically and by population, that is up for grabs by the expansionist, predatory ideological movements in the world."

"Unfortunately, Hindu nationalism today sometimes seems to be mimicking the worst things about the West, by becoming obsessively history-centric. But this is different than the past of Hinduism, and is atypical amongst Hindus even today."

"I believe in science, I believe in evidence, if there are other treatments that the modern medicine doesn't support those should also be brought to the table, whether its ayurveda, whether its Naturopathy... and should be evaluated in clinical trials."

"We interviewed Pierre Kory on my channel. It got almost million views in a few days. Then YouTube sent us notice banning it... What a shame they cannot face the evidence and experience of an accomplished doctor."

"It matters little whether such ideas have any basis in fact. Once an idea becomes entrenched in the institutional machinery and eventually in the collective imagination of the public, it can be used for all sorts of exploitation."

"There are institutions which study India academically for the purpose of evangelism and have formal links with Indian evangelical institutions. All these factors … create a strong population-base in India that will be financially, institutionally and emotionally dependent upon the West’s right-wing. … both state and non-state players—invest in building institutional infrastructural logistics in India, for effective control at social and political levels. A base for Western domination is being effectively constructed within India through evangelical organizations. The goal is to spread a fundamentalist kind of Christianity and create a population of believers with strong emotional bonding and dependence on the West. The Christian right in the United States is particularly active and ambitious in this regard."

"But the catalyst who is credited with the construction of the 'Dravidian race' was a missionary-scholar from the Anglican Church. His name was Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814–91), an evangelist for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, who combined the linguistic theory of Ellis with a strong racial narrative. He proposed the existence of the Dravidian race in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Race, which enjoys extreme popularity with Dravidianists to this day. Bishop Caldwell proposed that the Dravidians were in India before the Aryans, but got cheated by the Brahmins, who were the cunning agents of the Aryan. He argued that the simple-minded Dravidians were kept in shackles by Aryans through the exploitation of religion. Thus, the Dravidians needed to be liberated by Europeans like him. He proposed the complete removal of Sanskrit words from Tamil. Once the Dravidian mind would be free of the superstitions imposed by Aryans, Christian evangelization would reap the souls of Dravidians."

"Because the assumption of Mosaic ethnology was well established, it was important to secure both families of languages within that framework. Ellis claimed that Tamil is connected with Hebrew and also with ancient Arabic. Their logic was that since William Jones considered Sanskrit to be the language of Ham, and other scholars claimed that Sanskrit descended from Noah's oldest son, Japheth, by the process of elimination the remaining son of Noah, Shem, must be the ancestor of the Dravidian people. This made Dravidians a branch of the Scythians or in the same family as Jews."

"His work had far-reaching consequences. It established the theological foundation for Dravidian separatism from Hinduism, backed by the Church. It was accompanied by Christian usurpation of many of the classical art-forms of South India. The concept of dissociating Tamils from mainstream Hindu spirituality provided Caldwell an ethical rationale for Christian proselytization. Eighty years after his death, a statue of Caldwell was erected in Chennai's Marina Beach alongside the statue of another missionary scholar, G.U. Pope. It is a major landmark in that city today."

"The story that places the Apostle St Thomas in India in 53 CE is a lingering medieval myth. 1 It implicitly includes colonial and racial narratives; for instance, that the peaceful apostle ministered to the dark-skinned Indians, who turned on him and killed him. This myth, however, has no historical basis at all. Nevertheless, it has been shaped by various Christian churches into a powerful tool for the appropriation of Hindu culture in Tamil Nadu, by giving credit to 'Thomas Christianity' for everything positive in the south Indian culture, while blaming Hinduism for whatever is to be denigrated. It further serves as a tool to carve out Tamils from the common body of Indian culture and spirituality."

"While Deivanayagam was busy fabricating textual interpretations, the archbishop of Mylapore was manufacturing archeological evidence to prove the myth of St Thomas. In 1975, he hired a Christian convert from Hinduism to fabricate epigraphic evidence proving the visit of St Thomas to South India. When this hired gun failed, the archbishop sued him in court. The Illustrated Weekly of India raised questions alleging corruption in this case."

"Meanwhile, in a very famous Hindu pilgrimage center in the forests of Kerala, a Catholic priest proclaimed that his parish had unearthed a stone cross established by Thomas in 57 CE. The location was close to the ancient Mahadeva temple at Nilakkal, in the sacred eighteen hills of the deity of Sabarimala. 18 Soon, a church with a five-foot granite cross was erected and consecrated by top Catholic clergy, and daily prayers were started. 1Meanwhile, in a very famous Hindu pilgrimage center in the forests of Kerala, a Catholic priest proclaimed that his parish had unearthed a stone cross established by Thomas in 57 CE. The location was close to the ancient Mahadeva temple at Nilakkal, in the sacred eighteen hills of the deity of Sabarimala. 18 Soon, a church with a five-foot granite cross was erected and consecrated by top Catholic clergy, and daily prayers were started."

"From the seventeenth century onwards, Christian missionaries made scathing attacks on the Indian classical dance-forms, seeing them as a heathen practice. This was often expressed by attacking the devadasi system on the grounds of human rights. The devadasis were temple dancers, dedicated in childhood to a particular deity. The system was at its peak in the tenth and eleventh centuries, but a few hundred years later, the traditional system of temples protected by powerful kings had faded away under Mughal rule, especially since the Mughals turned it into popular entertainment, devoid of spirituality. The devadasi system degenerated in some cases into temple dancers used for prostitution, although the extent of this was exaggerated by the colonialists."

"There have been numerous suicides by those subjected to aggressive evangelism, particularly among young girls in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. In one instance, the vice chancellor of a university was removed because he had allowed aggressive evangelism inside the university hostel, while in another case a girl left a suicide note accusing Christianity of ruining her life. A twelve year old girl who alleged religious harassment in a Christian school committed suicide after she was publicly insulted for being unable to read verses from the Bible. From 2007 to 2008, several Hindu temples have been vandalized in districts of Tamil Nadu where Christians are in considerable numbers. In villages where Hindus have become the minority, temples were smashed and Hindus were threatened to leave and make the villages ‘Hindu-free’. In 2009, the traditional Tamil harvest festival Pongal has been stopped in a village in Kanyakumari district because of Christian activism against it."

"Such attacks and provocations on indigenous spiritual traditions never find their way into international media or the reports about freedom of religion."

"In 2010, Western media revealed that a Catholic clergy absconding from US law had been working in a diocese in Tamil Nadu. Despite numerous entreaties, and efforts by a Minnesota prosecutor to have him extradited on charges of child rape, the accused priest remained in his position as a secretary of the Diocese of Ootacamund’s Education Commission. According to the lawyer representing one of the priest’s victims the only ones who knew about him being a rapist were the bishop and the Vatican, and this was kept a secret. When the news broke out internationally the bishop of the Indian diocese in which the priest was working reacted calmly, as though it were not a major charge. The Indian media gave a lukewarm reporting to this case and at least one mainstream media person claimed an anti-Indian/ anti-Catholic bias as the reason for such allegations."

"But what the media—both Indian and International—did not report, is that charges of such child abuses have surfaced in the vernacular media in South India concerning Christian institutions. In March 2010, at a Catholic institution in Kerala a teenage girl died – declared as suicide due to rat poison. However, under pressure from her parents the police investigated the case and two priests were arrested, charged with sexual harassment of the deceased girl. In February 2010, a boy was abused by a Catholic priest and investigations revealed that the priest had been previously accused of misbehavior, but when reported his accusors were fined by the church and he was promoted to a position where he could abuse even more students. In 2008, a Catholic priest was found murdered in the hostel room of a famous Catholic pilgrim center in Tamil Nadu. Subsequent investigations by a news magazine revealed that he was part of a network which abused girls in Catholic orphanages. In 2007, a girl was found hanging to death inside a Catholic convent in Pondicherry. The public suspected sexual abuse and murder. In 2006, a Tamil Nadu Dalit girl was found dead under mysterious circumstances inside a Catholic educational institution. Condoms and liquor bottles were found inside the premises. Subsequent medical reports proved that the girl had been sexually abused."

"But the book could not get a mainstream publisher and I had to work very hard. The big mainstream publishers did not want to touch it... And it became an instant best-seller. They refused to put the cover image of a broken India even though I explained that I found it in the office of an African-American professor in Princeton, who was part of the Afro-Dalit movement. They found it too provocative."

"Another very important feature revealed in Sangam literature is the conception of the unity of the land-mass stretching from the Himalayas in the north to Kanyakumari in the south. In at least two sources, Tamil kings were praised as having had supremacy amidst all the chieftains who reigned in the land between ‘the Himalayan abode of Gods’ in the north and Kumari in the south and the lands which have the sea as the frontier. 46 The northern limit of this cultural unity is often referred to as the Himalayas. Ganges in floods, as well as ships travelling on the Ganges, is among the scenes depicted in Sangam literature. Pilgrims from all over India coming to have holy baths at Kanyakumari as well as Rameswaram (Koti) have been mentioned in Sangam literature. Speaking of Himalayas and Kanyakumari in association, is another hallmark of many Sangam poems. Apart from such spiritual-cultural unity of India depicted in Sangam poems, there is at least one poem that refers to the political unity of India. This poem, from Puranannuru, speaks of a time when the whole of India ‘from Kanyakumari to Himalayas’ was ruled as one nation, unifying the diverse geographical zones of ‘plateaus, mountains, forests and human habitations’ by kings of the solar dynasty, and identifies Tamil kings as descendants of the solar dynasty."

"Pro-India perceptions are ignored and the Indian legacy of supporting the rights of down-trodden are dismissed derisively. Worldviews that emphasize conflicts are encouraged. Ideologues give open call to racial civil wars, which are published by prestigious academic publishing houses of the West. US governmental monitoring mechanisms focus on India with distorting lenses and quote and requote their own reports to project a savage imagery of India as a dark frontier region ripe for Western intervention."

"Steve Farmer explains on his webpage that its goal is to 'allow policy analysts and historians to build cultural simulations without any formal programming'. The term 'cultural simulations' means the ability to simulate 'what if' the USA were to collaborate with group X against group Y, and various permutations and combinations of scenarios for such 'cultural interventions' in India. One can see similar theoretical interventions actually being implemented in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen."

"India is more than a nation state. It is also a unique civilization with philosophies and cosmologies that are markedly distinct from the dominant culture of our times – the West. India’s spiritual traditions spring from dharma which has no exact equivalent in western frameworks. Unfortunately, in the rush to celebrate the growing popularity of India on the world stage, its civilizational matrix is being digested into western universalism, thereby diluting its distinctiveness and potential."

"India itself cannot be viewed only as a bundle of the old and the new, accidentally and uncomfortably pieced together, an artificial construct without a natural unity. Nor is she just a repository of quaint, fashionable accessories to Western lifestyles; nor a junior partner in a global capitalist world. India is its own distinct and unified civilization with a proven ability to manage profound differences, engage creatively with various cultures, religions and philosophies, and peacefully integrate many diverse streams of humanity. These values are based on ideas about divinity, the cosmos and humanity that stand in contrast to the fundamental assumptions of Western civilization."

"When it was my turn to speak, I recommended that the term 'tolerance' in the resolution be replaced with the phrase 'mutual respect'. .... As I noted, we 'tolerate' those we consider not good enough, but we do not extend our respect to them. 'Tolerance' implies control over those who do not conform to our norms by allowing them some, though not all, of the rights and privileges we enjoy. A religion which involves the worship of 'false gods' and whose adherents are referred to as 'heathens' can be tolerated, but it cannot be respected. Tolerance is a patronizing posture, whereas respect implies that we consider the other to be equally legitimate – a position which some religions routinely deny to others, instead declaring these 'others' to be 'idol worshippers' or 'infidels' and the like."

"I looked at the various examples of religious tension that were listed in the paper and wondered whether it was perhaps too simplistic to identify the 'victims' and the 'culprits' as they had done. I noticed that Islam was listed as a victim in one country but not as an aggressor in others. The same was true of Christianity: its representatives had lodged complaints against other religious groups in places such as East Timor, but there was silence concerning Christianity's own aggressive campaigns elsewhere. Later I realized that such asymmetrical representations are not uncommon in the academy, so I proposed to Prof. Law that we do some pre-conference preparation and research the deep-rooted causes of religious violence. My feeling was that all religious ideologies, without exception, should be open to serious investigation. My foundation offered to fund a one-year research project in which graduate students at Cornell representing every major religion would closely scan the major books of every religion. They would highlight every line or statement that expressed contempt, intolerance or hatred against non-believers as well as other excluded and marginalized groups such as slaves, women, foreigners, and so on. Since religious violence often gains steam from such hateful speech contained in the very texts believers revere, the conference would endeavour to enumerate these offensive and questionable teachings and call for a resolution against them. In Hindu scriptures, for instance, all statements that are disparaging of 'lower' castes were to be placed on the list. Throughout the process, each religious delegation would have sufficient opportunity to make comments and resolve disagreements on specifics. I felt it would be a watershed event in the cessation of violence if the various religions agreed to discontinue such offensive teachings. Prof. Law herself supported my proposal but was unsure about how the religious groups would feel; so she set about calling them to gauge their reactions. Some weeks later, she told me that merely raising my suggestion with certain religious heads (whom she did not name) had elicited considerable anger. They could not 'tolerate' the idea of outsiders meddling with their religious texts. These texts, after all, could never be altered nor declared invalid in any manner as they contained the words of God."

"The next big occasion that offered an opportunity to test my position was the United Nation's Millennium Religion Summit in 2000. This was a major gathering in New York City of hundreds of leaders from all religions. It was promoted as a pivotal event which would be a harbinger of harmony among all faiths in the new millennium. This goal was to be partly accomplished by the release of a resolution on the matter. Everything seemed to be going well until the last minute, when the New York Times reported serious disagreements over the final language of the resolution that was to be passed. A few days later, the Summit faced the prospect of a collapse with no resolution passed, prompting top UN officials to intervene in an attempt to try to break the impasse. The Hindu delegation, led by Swami Dayananda Saraswati of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, had insisted that the term 'tolerance' in the draft be replaced with 'mutual respect'. However, the then representative of the Vatican, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict, had put his foot down in opposition to such a phrase. After all, if religions deemed 'heathen' were to start getting officially respected, there would be no justification for evangelizing and converting their adherents to Christianity. This would undermine the exclusive claims of Christianity which form the justification for the Church's large-scale proselytizing campaigns..... However, the matter did not end here. Within a month of the Millennium Summit's conclusion, presumably after an internal analysis of the consequence of this UN-affiliated resolution, the Vatican suddenly made an announcement which shocked liberal Catholic theologians. The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (an office which was previously known as the Inquisition ), responsible for formulating and enacting official Catholic doctrine, issued a new policy to address the issue of religious pluralism. The policy document, called Dominus Jesus , reaffirms the historic doctrine and mission of the exclusivity of the Church."

"She wrote: 'In the course of our conversation about effective interfaith dialogue, he [Rajiv Malhotra] pointed out that we fall short in our efforts to promote true peace and understanding in this world when we settle for tolerance instead of making the paradigm shift to mutual respect. His remarks made me think a little more deeply about the distinctiveness between the words "tolerance" and "respect", and the values they represent.' Haag went on to explain that the Latin origin of 'tolerance' referred to enduring, which, though a laudable idea, did not connote mutual affirmation or support. '[The term] also implicitly suggests an imbalance of power in the relationship, with one of the parties in the position of giving or withholding permission for the other to be.' She then explained that the Latin word for respect meant holding someone in esteem and that the term 'presupposes we are equally worthy of honor. There is no room for arrogance and exclusivity in mutual respect.'"

"Postmodernism has made it fashionable to deconstruct what its adherents called the 'grand narratives' of history, seeing these as little more than the stories of the triumph of Western progress which was largely achieved by suppressing or violently overthrowing other groups. More problematically, postmodernists advocate that all identities be dismantled or blurred and view all positively distinctive cultures as being oppressive to weaker or less assertive ones. This idea might at first seem reasonable, especially when viewed through a postcolonial or subaltern lens, but it opens the door to a pervasive cynicism and narrowness of vision with no workable criteria of value in aesthetics, politics or philosophy. The postmodern insistence on denying such identities as Indian and Western leaves non-Western cultures vulnerable to even further exploitation because they are denied the security of possessing a difference which is real and defensible. Postmodernism, then, tends to undermine the particular reality of the non-Western culture that might be in need of being affirmed, protected and developed. The type of Indian distinctiveness I shall propose is not affected by the problems posed by postmodernists, because (i) it is not based on historical exclusiveness or superiority, be it religious or otherwise, (ii) it makes no claims of finality of knowledge, and (iii) it has no mandate to impose on others."

"India's postmodernist scholars who brag about their Western training and connections are encouraged to deconstruct Indian civilization, showing it to be a scourge against the oppressed. The deconstruction of India by Indian thinkers has a destabilizing effect which invites a new kind of colonialism. The most fashionable kind of difference being championed by Indian postmodernists is of the subalterns 'from below', seen as the oppressed underclass. But many of these oppressed minorities have been taken over by global nexuses (churches, Chinese Maoists and Islamists, to name only the major ones) with the result that they are not truly autonomous and independent but satellites serving a new kind of remote-controlled colonialism. Thus, the postmodern posture on difference has had the overall effect of causing native cultural identities to become vulnerable to imperialism – which is exactly the opposite of what the postmodernists claim they want to achieve."

"It is through Western categories, and hence the Western 'gaze', that the people who constitute the Judeo-Christian traditions see the world. This gives the Western perspective a de facto status as arbiter of what is considered universally true. When another civilization is the object of such a gaze, it becomes relative and no longer universal. Indeed, its depiction as the alien makes it interesting precisely because it is particular and not universal."

"The corrective to this problem in my view is the ancient and powerful Indian practice of 'purva paksha'. This is the traditional dharmic approach to rival schools. It is a dialectical approach, taking a thesis by an opponent ('purva pakshin') and then providing its rebuttal ('khandana') so as to establish the protagonist's views ('siddhanta'). The purva paksha tradition required any debater first to argue from the perspective of his opponent in order to test the validity of his understanding of the opposing position, and from there to realize his own shortcomings. Only after perfecting his understanding of opposing views would he be qualified to refute them. Such debates encourage individuals to maintain flexibility of perspective and honesty rather than seek victory egotistically. In this way, the dialectical process ensures a genuine and far-reaching shift in the individual."

"There have been sporadic attempts at using dharmic categories to contest the Western gaze and gaze back, as it were, even though these were not quite purva paksha as I am defining it. For instance, in the 1990s, anthropologist McKim Marriott, in his anthology of academic conference papers, refers to the importance of developing and deploying Indian categories of social thought and analysis, not only to understand the subcontinent better but to refine, develop and render less parochial the study of various cultures in general. 38 Marriott emphasizes how distorting and limiting Western universalism can be, and goes on to note that common distinctions in the West, such as Marx's opposition between material base and superstructure, and Durkheim's separation between sacred and profane, cannot capture the fluid and complex realities one finds in dharmic civilizations. He also points out that the West's constant search for an elusive stability is based on the presupposition that all societies are prepared to accept European and American notions of order rather than other, more fluid categories of social and political identity."

"I began to see the beginnings of what was later to crystallize as my thesis that history-centrism is the key difference between Judeo-Christian and dharma traditions."

"While the inner sciences have a long history in countries such as India, Tibet and China, they have never rejected the outer sciences, and there has never been a conflict between dharma and science as there has been between Western religion and science."

"In Hinduism, classical dance is conceived as an internalized spiritual practice: using movement, sound and emotion to internalize the cosmology and epistemology within the dancer's body. It is the only major world religion to have been successfully transmitted through such embodiment for so long. This is exemplified by the iconographic depiction of Shiva-Nataraja, which is a stylized projection of Shiva manifested as the ascetic master of sacred dance. Similarly, the narratives and iconography of Krishna dancing with his devotees exemplifies, evokes and reinforces the 'rasa' (inner emotional states) of the devotees as they attempt to unite inwardly with their 'ishta-devata' (personal deity). Such expressions are not reserved for use by a spiritual elite; rather, they inform and engage the entire culture and are part of the folk narratives known to every Hindu."

"Even the much-maligned Manusmriti (commonly known in the West as the Laws of Manu) was never enforced as the divine and all-encompassing law of Hindus – except by the British rulers who enforced it to show that the colonizers were ruling in accordance with 'Hindu Law' (a canon they had constructed themselves). Moreover, Manu's code is explicit in stating that it is not universal. It calls for updates, amendments and rewrites in order to suit different circumstances. Given this outlook, the notion of dharmic fundamentalism (or intolerance or exclusivism) is an oxymoron. Behaviour that is inspired and reinforced by personal commitment to a spiritual goal, as in the practice of ethics in the first two limbs of classical yoga (known as 'yama' and 'niyama'), is less likely to fall astray than when ethics are justified only for social cohesion or when morality is imposed by divine fiat."

"For instance, in Hinduism and Buddhism, mantras, or sacred chants, which encapsulate many of the key insights of the tradition, are taught to children before they can even understand their meaning. Their chanting is considered effective even without this understanding. Through their vibrations, these mantras exert an impact directly on the body down to the cellular or even subtler levels, and become profoundly internalized and transformative."

"The practice of memorizing and reciting ancient scriptures is, in many ways, more accurate than learning via the written word, for an error in recitation can be corrected immediately whereas a scribal error could go unnoticed for centuries. The West tends to think of the oral tradition as a primitive and inefficient means of knowledge transmission, one that was wisely replaced by the invention of writing. Although writing did indeed revolutionize communication, the Indian tradition retains a sense (long gone from the West) that the spoken word carries spiritual energy and is filled with presence. This understanding is reflected not only in the mantra but also in the bhajan, or sacred song."

"A religion with an ever-growing line of enlightened masters, such as exists in the dharma traditions, is less likely to become fossilized into institutional dogma and therefore more difficult to control."

"The point being that the influence of dharmic philosophy on Western culture runs deep and yet consistently goes unacknowledged."

"The Abrahamic traditions tend to focus outward; the dharmic ones, inward. The difference between observing historical mandates and discovering the structures of consciousness is stark. I am aware of the centuries of intense intellectual debates among Indian philosophers that clearly demonstrate the vast diversity of views. I do not wish to over-generalize. My integral theory of dharma opposes homogeneity and yet identifies common principles, especially in contrast with Western assumptions. 4 The history-centric worldview results in synthetic unity, not integral unity."

"The metaphor of Indra's Net also suggests a creative intelligence which is omnipresent, permeating all life. All appearances of separateness are maya (illusory). The capacity of one jewel to reflect the light of every other within this infinite net is difficult for the linear mind to comprehend, but it serves as an apt precursor to an understanding of multidimensional theories which have emerged in physics and metaphysics. Thus, long before modern science, Indra's Net provided an excellent metaphor for what is now recognized as the main quality of the hologram, which is that every area of the hologram contains information on the whole."

"As I delved deeper, I realized that the schisms between Christianity and science have never been resolved, not even after centuries of conflict. Instead, there is merely a veneer that attempts to hide the underlying cracks. This is not the case with dharmic traditions where there is no inherent conflict in principle between science and dharma."

"The modern West is chauvinistic in its account of why freedom did not evolve in non-Western societies. The dharmic notions of freedom such as moksha, mukti and nirvana are alternatives which the West has not recognized sufficiently. 68 From a dharmic perspective, the West has been driven not by freedom but by the mandates of its self-image which require infinite expansion in a finite world. This is neither sustainable, as we now know, nor scalable to include all humanity. History points to various schemes (including colonialism and genocide) aimed at containing or undermining the non-West."

"So impressive was Ashoka's example that many other Asian monarchs adopted it. Japan's Prince Shotuku, for example, used it to unify the Japanese nation and improve international relations. For this policy, the renowned historians Arnold Toynbee and H.G. Wells have called Ashoka the greatest monarch who ever lived. Furthermore, when India commanded superiority in the eyes of the nations that wanted to receive its Buddhist civilization (such as China, Mongolia, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand), there was never any attempt to impose rulers or governance on others, or ask for taxation or tribute to any Indian nexus, or subvert the native cultures, languages and histories of those nations. The contrast between this and the manner in which Western civilization has spread is stark and warrants greater attention."

"'People from dharmic cultures tend to be more accepting of difference, unpredictability and uncertainty than westerners. The dharmic view is that so-called 'chaos' is natural and normal; it needs, of course, to be balanced by order, but there is no compelling need to control or eliminate it entirely nor to force cohesion from outside. The West, conversely, sees chaos as a profound threat that needs to be eradicated either by destruction or by complete assimilation. […] Indians tend to be more relaxed in unpredictable situations than westerners. Indians indeed find it natural to engage in non-linear thinking, juxtaposing opposites and tackling complexities that cannot be reduced to simple concepts or terms. They may be said even to thrive on ambiguity, doubt, uncertainty, multitasking, and in the absence of centralized authority and normative codes. Westerners, by contrast, tend by and large to be fearful of unpredictable or decentralized situations. They regard these situations as 'problems' to be 'fixed'. […] In the vast canon of classical writings in Sanskrit, we see many context-sensitive and flexible ways of dealing with chaos and difference. The search here is always for balance and equilibrium with the 'rights' of chaos acknowledged. On the other hand, in the creation stories in Genesis and in the Greek classics, there is a constant zero-sum battle between the two poles in which order must triumph.'"

"The reductionist prejudice that the West equals order and India equals chaos fails to explain how Indians are able to excel not only in various spiritual practices but also in the rational fields of science, business and engineering. Western scholars are caught off-guard when confronted with evidence of sophisticated cultural and scientific achievements in the pre-Western history of the subcontinent. Many of them deal with this confusion by arguing that the achievements of the Indian past and even the comprehensive philosophies of the present are somehow not really Indian ; hence, for instance, the view that the highly ordered and precise Indus–Sarasvati civilization is not Indian in its origins. If westerners do call something 'Indian', they try to show that it was somehow antithetical to Sanskrit-based civilization and accuse the latter of having destroyed it. Hence, too, the view that Hindu dharma did not exist prior to some conspiracy by Hindu nationalists to conjure it up during the past two hundred years. All these pronouncements are based on arguments that Hinduism lacks norms, order and central authority. As per this mindset, chaos cannot coexist with order."

"In Hindu marriages, for instance, unlike the nuptials of Christianity, the priest does not perform the rituals, nor does he have the authority to declare the couple married; he acts only as the coach. The groom and bride themselves perform the ceremony. In other words, there is no external authority declaring them man and wife. The same do-it-yourself freedom is evident in other pursuits, such as yoga and meditation. Even in formal worship, the guidelines are meant for beginners, and these give way to increasing freedom as the individual becomes self-propelled in the spiritual journey without need for external authority."

"The Vedic concept of bandhu binds the underlying integral unity of the universe. The Vedic yajna (incorrectly translated as 'sacrifice', as discussed in Chapter 5) is the workshop where such bandhus are forged and is a metaphor for the link between life's myriad manifestations and their transcendent archetypes. Yajna, in a sense, represents the integration of chaos into order. Again, the epistemology of Vedic thought is nicely summed up in the Rig Veda (10:130.3): 'What was the archetype (rupas), what was the manifestation (pratirupas), and what was the connection (bandhuta) between them?' The Vedic quest for links between archetypes and their manifestations holds a key to understanding the relationship between order and chaos. The rituals of the creation yajna are a metaphor for transforming the chaotic unknown by re-categorizing it and making it function as a prototype for all subsequent texts, practices and institutions. Bandhus are the bonds of interdependence."

"Of course, the West has occasionally dabbled in countercultural revolts against normative conventions, and these have enriched its society with a new context-sensitivity. In general, however, its dominant ideal is the privileging of certainty and uniformity, which it touts as universalism."

"Tantra often runs into trouble in the West, because it utilizes transgression as the vehicle to transcend dualism in certain cases. To even begin to understand tantra, however, we must bear in mind the cultural and philosophical context in which it exists. Tantra originated as a range of bodily technologies for perfecting the individual. Many of its practices, texts, beliefs and traditions are opposed to any normative order and serve as a form of counterculture in India. Its rejection of order takes the form even of sanctioning the deliberate violation of norms, particularly those centred on ritual purity. Over time, there occurred a healthy cross-fertilizing back and forth with Vedic and other traditions. Elements may have been borrowed from Vedic and other rituals, symbols and philosophies, and reformulated, systematized and integrated into the coherent corpus of what became known as the tantra tradition. These two poles of values and rituals coexist and mutually penetrate each other in complex ways."

"Mantra energizes prana, or life-spirit energy. Some healers transfer prana to a patient. Even self-healing can be accomplished by concentrating prana on certain organs, which can have the effect of clearing away an illness. Mantra can be a part of this process. If one repeats a mantra while visualizing an ailing internal organ bathed in light, the power of the mantra can become concentrated there with beneficial effect. This is why a child is often carefully given an appropriate name so that it will internalize its name as vibration, and over time the effect of repeating the name will bring inner transformation in subtle ways."

"Yogic experiences are difficult to represent accurately in any language other than Sanskrit, for, as Sri Aurobindo has noted, it is only in Sanskrit that they have been systematized. Thus, Sanskrit is the 'language of yoga'. Sanskrit philosophy states that monosyllabic sounds comprising the Sanskrit alphabet are at the origin of creation. In fact, the Sanskrit phonemes themselves reveal the nature of reality. The root sound of the phoneme references its corresponding manifestation."

"Since every root sound has a distinct meaning, its signature is found in all the words derived from it. It is theoretically possible to explain the meaning of the words according to the algebraic combination of letters, syllables and roots. This transparency of rootsounds and semantics follows a natural process and gives Sanskrit the ability to discover its own history. Consequently, Sanskrit is an ever-creative language in which each word is the parent and creator of ideas. A letter is called 'akshara', which literally means imperishable or eternal. Akshara is the eternal sound, and it does not perish but reveals the whole secret of speech. Another term for letter is 'varna', which means hue or colour. Thus, every letter is heard as a sound and has a visual hue as it manifests. The rishis are said to have seen , and not just heard , the Vedas. The term for alphabet, 'varnamala', literally means 'garland of colours' or qualities or hues which the artist uses to paint reality."

"The American poet T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) was one of the few westerners who understood both the potency of Sanskrit and its relationship to dharma. He studied the language at Harvard, where it was an integral part of the philosophical curriculum. Ultimately, he refrained from embracing either Hinduism or Buddhism as a result of his own cultural upbringing and conditioning. Nonetheless, Eliot demonstrated his insight into Sanskrit in his major poem 'The Waste Land' not only by exploring the multiple meanings of the phoneme 'DA' (mentioned above) but by ending his poem with the mantra ' shantih shantih shantih'. He had enough understanding of the claims made for Sanskrit not to attempt to translate this mantra. In her book, T.S. Eliot and Indic Traditions , Cleo Kearns explains that it was the poet's study of the Upanishads and Vedic texts that showed him that breath, sound and silence were at the heart of language. Eliot understood that a mantra's efficacy depends not on its meaning, per se, but on the effect that its correct utterance and accompanying breathing techniques have. While he did not use the term, he could have been speaking of mantra-shakti, or 'mantra-power', when he wrote that language works through 'syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious level of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. It works through meanings, certainly, or not without meanings in the ordinary sense …'"

"From at least the beginning of the Common Era until about the thirteenth century, Sanskrit was the primary linguistic and cultural medium for the ruling and administrative circles from Purushapura (Peshawar) in Gandhara (Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan) to as far east as Pandurang in Annam (South Vietnam) and Prambanam in Central Java. It influenced much of Asia for more than a thousand years. Sanskriti was neither imposed by an imperial power nor sustained by any centrally organized Church ecclesiology. Thus, it has been both the result and cause of a cultural consciousness shared by most South and South-east Asians regardless of religion, class or gender. Centuries prior to the Europeanization of the globe, the entire arc – from Central Asia through Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and all the way to Indonesia – was a crucible of a sophisticated Pan-Asian civilization."

"Sanskriti has had an obvious influence on Thailand dating from 1500 ce. Sanskrit was used for public social, cultural, and administrative purposes in that country and other parts of South-east Asia. Today, Sanskrit is highly respected as the medium for validating, legitimating and transmitting royal succession and instituting formal rituals. Khmer society (in Cambodia) was highly Indianized, and the later Thai kings embraced the Indian religions and based their principles of government on Hindu practices."

"I am aware that important initiatives are under way, often funded by generous Western donors, to preserve and translate ancient Sanskrit texts. These efforts are laudable. They cannot substitute, however, for an understanding of the importance of Sanskrit terms and texts in the original language as resources for spiritual practice and even for social organization. Nor do these efforts even begin to rectify one of the great scandals of the modern university: the absence of Sanskrit from the curriculum – even in philosophy where it was a pillar of learning in the West not long ago."

"Unfortunately, Baba Ramdev missed the chance to explain that Aum practice is designed to dissolve nama-rupa (name and form, and the context of name and form) from the mind. That is the whole idea, and the scientific principle, behind mantra. Its universality lies in its ability to transcend all particular contexts. The names 'Jesus' and 'Allah' are proper nouns laden with historical context, i.e., nama-rupa. For Baba Ramdev to make any scientific equation of Aum with all these other names would require that he first study empirically the effects of chanting historically contextualized words such as 'Jesus' and 'Allah'; only then would he be in a position to determine if they are identical to the mantric effect of Aum."

". In the case of India, the Joshua Project points its finger at Hindus who comprise the dominant faith and are clearly targeted as competitors to overcome. This is particularly ironic given that Hinduism has a reputation for embracing and receiving other faiths, including Christianity. Yet when incidents of violence have occurred, it is often the Christian missionaries who cast the first stone in the form of hate speech such as 'pagan', 'idol-worshipper', 'heathen', etc. – systematically belittling Indian deities, symbols and traditions and offering whole villages financial incentives to convert. But rarely is any of this provocation ever mentioned. What is carefully documented and publicized instead are the half-truths, for example, that a Christian was attacked for merely being so."

"As the evangelists leave my home, I always hope our conversation has challenged their assumptions about the people they are preaching to, and that perhaps they will re-examine the idea that all people outside of their church are in a state of spiritual deficiency. But until they do, I will continue to welcome them into my living room, offer them chai, and share with them the good news that there is no such thing as original sin."

"Such a universalism fails to address human needs; the most it can achieve is a kind of synthetic unity of civilizations under the rubric of the West. Part of the problem is that the Western approach has been reductionist, and its binary categories result in violence when applied universally. For example, the binary categories of sacred/secular, monotheism/polytheism, creation/evolution, and political left/right are inappropriate starting points when trying to understand dharmic civilization. The East/West or Orient/Occident divide is also arbitrary and has come about as a result of historical events particular to what is now called 'the West'."

"Western academics not only produce critical editions of dharma texts but determine the very categories of the discourse, the manner in which complex words and situations are contextualized, what is included as interesting and relevant (and what is left out), which social theories and textual hermeneutics are to be used, and who the authorities are in matters of interpretation. Engaging in sweeping generalizations, the Western academy routinely passes judgement on whether Hinduism is a legitimate religion, how and when it should be discussed (if at all), and who its authorized spokespersons are. All of this causes many in the dharmic traditions to doubt the legitimacy of their culture, especially in relation to the established, prevailing taxonomy."

"But it was Hegel, among all German thinkers, who had the deepest and most enduring impact on Western thought and identity. It is often forgotten that his work was a reaction against the Romantics' passion for India's past. He borrowed Indian ideas (such as monism) while debating Indologists to argue against the value of Indian civilization. He posited that the West, and only the West, was the agent of history and teleology. India was the 'frozen other', which he used as a foil to define the West."

"In fact, though Hegel did not see it this way, there are many aspects of Christianity that do not accord with individual freedom, including the insistence on obedience to established and communal forms of religion. Furthermore, the role of the Church in salvation at the End Times is an obstacle to individual spiritual freedom. Contrast this with the emphasis on Indian inner science and the freedom of the individual. Two signature features of dharma traditions are unbounded freedom in choosing a path and lack of any imposed theological dogma or ecclesiastical or political authority. Such traditions cannot be dismissed as less free and individualistic than those of the West. Do not figures such as Buddha, Ashoka, and Gandhi exemplify autonomous individuals bringing revolutionary historical and intellectual change?"

"The notion of individualism that has emerged in the West is a relatively recent development even though it is often claimed to be derived from classical antiquity and Abrahamic theological tenets. This revisionist claim of being the exclusive and defining feature of the West – in contradistinction to the putative Oriental lack of individuality – is the result of myth-making."

"The contradiction between Christian exclusivism and true liberalism is seldom discussed openly (and perhaps even privately)."

"This book offers an introduction to the kind of work required for this preparation. Perhaps the best public framework for such an encounter is sapeksha-dharma. Sapekshata (the quality of sapeksha-dharma) itself, we remember, literally means engagement 'with reciprocity and mutual respect'. Such a framework is consistent with the principle of bandhuta in the sense of inter-subjectivity, solidarity and fraternity across paths and identities. It means unity in diversity to the extent of mutual cooperation, and even mutual dependency. This framework is the ethos of what might be called 'positive pluralism' rather than mere tolerance or indifference emanating from a position of assumed superiority. Sapekshata stems from a belief in integral unity, which is to say that in this view difference and underlying unity are not mutually contradictory. Its opposite, nirapekshata, is closer to what the West defines as secularism, which is only a palliative developed to prevent conflicts arising from a tentative and tenuous stalemate. Secularism does not foster pan-humanness across all boundaries beyond offering the promise of material equality, and not even that promise has ever been realized. Sometimes, secularism is even used to promulgate divisiveness. And yet it has attained a lofty place among intellectuals. Sapekshata is not simply a negative principle, such as the US Constitution's statement that the state should not interfere with religious practice. Rather, it is a principle of active support for spiritual practice in diverse forms . The pluralist character of the ancient Indian state has been attributed to dharma-sapekshata. For instance, the protection of minorities depends on the goodwill of the majority, and sapekshadharma is why India has an unparalleled track record of welcoming numerous kinds of communities from various parts of the world and offering them the support to prosper without any loss of identity or religious tradition. The recent import of secularism from the West is based on substituting 'religion' for 'dharma' and adopting Western social and legal structures. This has led to divisive vote-bank politics in the name of secularism and to a counter-reaction by a segment of Hindu politicians wanting to create a Hindu 'religion' that is equally political. The chain reaction set in motion has been disastrous both for Hindus and minorities. This book, therefore, is also a contribution to the heated debate on the implications of secularism in India. In particular, it must be stressed that sapeksha-dharma does not demand adherence to Hinduism."

"In the Mahabharata, the ceremony for the oath of a new king includes the admonition: 'Be like a garland-maker, O king, and not like a charcoal burner.' This is essentially a call for dharma-sapekshata. The garland is a metaphor for dharmic diversity in which flowers of many colours and forms are strung harmoniously for the most pleasing effect, and it symbolizes social coherence. By contrast, charcoal is a metaphor for reducing the diversity into homogeneity, burning it into lifeless ashes. The king, in taking the oath, is being asked to exemplify supporting a coherent diversity in which highly contextual and varied culture is a unity (garland) of distinct particulars (flowers). It avoids the two extremes: incoherence of a chaotic scattering of flowers, and reductionist, homogenized universals. I offer sapeksha-dharma as an alternative to Western secularism. Secularism is perhaps better expressed as pantha-nirapeksha, which means not favouring one pantha (i.e., sect or denomination) over another. A society based on sapeksha-dharma would be expected to uphold the highest dharma rather than exercising mere tolerance or indifference. By its very nature, dharma would be sensitive to diversity among communities. Civic identity, daily life, politics and the art of government would all be maintained through multiple levels of reciprocal relationships informed and guided by this notion. It would also provide a safe framework for purva paksha since the ethic of mutual respect would trump the differences before they could turn toxic. Also, there can be no finality or closure to dharma. It is more like an open architecture, forever unfolding and assimilating. Purva paksha, on these terms, is not a way of settling debate or of asserting unity but of allowing unity to emerge, dissolve, fall apart and be reborn from moment to moment in the unfolding of civilizational encounters."

"The precise outcome of purva paksha on both sides of the East/ West divide cannot be presupposed, and the participants must remain open to all possibilities. What is needed immediately is a recognition of difference, and of the importance of respecting this difference. I hope this book contributes to the establishing of an open field of engagement, a Kurukshetra, on which East and West may meet on more equitable terms than in the past."

"For example: (a) The notion of the stream of consciousness in James's psychology is derived from the Buddhist characterization of consciousness metaphorically styled as a stream ('sota'). James's notion of a psychodynamic constellation of mind and mental states is patently the Buddhist conception of a central mental event ('mano, citta') accompanied by satellite mental states in ever-changing configurations. The Buddhist conception of mind and mental events posits (based on introspection, not speculation) a solar-system model of mind. (b) Furthermore, James's signature idea of pragmatism, especially as applicable to metaphysics, is borrowed from the very anti-speculative methodology which is a cardinal and signature Buddhism. James's pragmatic axiom is closest to the Buddhist notion of 'artha-kriya', elaborated on by the Buddhist logic school of Dignaga and Dharmakirti. This is the central deconstructionist tenet of the Madhyamika school. James was under the tutelage of the Sri Lankan Buddhist scholar Anagarika Dharmapala (see note on Anagarika Dharmapala) and acknowledges his debt to him openly, though accounts of this are rarely acknowledged by present-generation biographers of James or historians of philosophy."

"The book is one of the few attempts by an Indian intellectual to challenge seriously the assumptions and presuppositions of the field of India and/or South Asian studies tout ensemble , including not only the work of European and American scholarship but as well the neocolonialist, postmodernist and subaltern ressentiment so typical of contemporary Indian intellectuals... The book will be controversial on many different levels and will undoubtedly elicit rigorous critical response'."

"Malhotra writes with passion from within an avowedly dharmic stance, undermining the attempts to domesticate and expropriate Indian traditions in a process of inter-religious dialogue that is ultimately based on a Western cosmological framework. This book is essential reading for Western scholars."

"Rajiv Malhotra has been a leading spokesperson defending the Indian philosophical and religious traditions as he views them.... I strongly affirm Malhotra’s preference for a Dharma humanism as opposed to the Abrahamic traditions based on divine revelation in history. He is correct to claim that there is no special providence in the Indian traditions, and no religious group—except for recent Christian missionar- ies and their converts—have had a vision of being a chosen people on the basis of their own revelation. 1 I believe that the absence of a doctrine of special revelation is the primary reason why there have been so few religiously motivated acts of violence (until recently) in South Asia."

"A classical concept in Hinduism has been that a true proposition has to be consistent with sruti, yukti (reason/logic) and anubhava."

"[Indra's Net is a metaphor for] the profound cosmology and outlook that permeates Hinduism. Indra's Net symbolizes the universe as a web of connections and interdependences [...] I seek to revive it as the foundation for Vedic cosmology and show how it went on to become the central principle of Buddhism, and from there spread into mainstream Western discourse across several disciplines."

"For example, Cambridge University established a prize named for an essay competition on the topic: 'The best means of civilizing the subjects of the British Empire in India, and of diffusing the light of the Christian religion throughout the eastern world.'"

"...acting on Hacker's wishes, the editor of his collected works excluded the author's polemical Christian writings from the compilation. ... Many such polemical writings also appeared in fringe religious pamphlets and propaganda literature which are unknown to most scholars.... Hacker's suppression of this material compromised his integrity as an objective scholar, as it misled readers into thinking his writings on Hinduism were objective evaluations when in fact they were, in Andrew Nicholson's words, the work of a 'Christian polemicist'. In his posthumously published wrigings, Hacker is as explicit in his support for Christianity as he is in his attack on contemporary Hinduism."

"This is why the mainstream Western academics does not teach Abhinavagupta, Aryabhata, Bharata, Bhartrihari, Shankara, Kalidasa, Kapila, Kautilya, Nagarjuna, Panini, Patanjali and Ramanuja, among many other Indian greats on par with the great Greek thinkers. This violates the principle that the classical thinkers of all civilizations ought to be incorporated into curricula based solely on their merit and current relevance."

"The modern academics find it politically incorrect to criticize the devastation under Islamic rule, even though post-colonial scholars have amply exposed the ruin created by the British."

"In the Mahabharata, the ceremony for the oath of a new king includes the admonition: 'Be like a garland-maker, O king, and not like a charcoal burner.' The garland symbolizes social coherence; it is a metaphor for dharmic diversity in which flowers of many colors and forms are strung harmoniously for the most pleasing effect. In contrast, the charcoal burner is a metaphor for the brute-force reduction of diversity into homogeneity, where diverse living substances are transformed into uniformly lifeless ashes."

"The Gita ... explains the basis for the Hindu principle of charity as Narayana-seva, i.e., serving God by serving one's fellow human... This is also the basis for Gandhi's concept of ahimsa. Krishna asserts that generosity (dana) and compassion (daya) are qualities that arise 'from me alone'."

"Before Vivekananda, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had proposed such a system of ethics in which he cited Hindu texts for support. He used the Upanishadic notion 'tat tvam asi' to assert that a good person recognizes that his self is the same as that which is manifested in every other person, and this notion grounded his ethics."

"There is a new awakening in India that is challenging the ongoing westernization of the discourse about India and the intellectual machinery that produces it."

"One of his [Pollock's] goals is to critique and expunge what he sees as deeply entrenched static social hierarchies, barbarisms and poisons. I do not see anything inherently wrong with this intention by itself; most Hindus welcome improvements and the evolution of their culture. The issue worth debating is that Pollock sees these ills as deeply rooted in the Vedas themselves and as requiring the abandonment of core metaphysical and sacred perspectives."

"I am not alone in making this point. At least one European Indologist accuses Pollock of relocating Orientalism 'to the "New Raj" across the deep blue sea'."

"He [Grünendahl] says Pollock's narrative 'is not an evidence-based study of Orientalism or Indology in Germany, but a sophisticated charge of anti-Semitism based largely on trumped-up "evidence".... Pollock's post-Orientalist messianism would have us believe that only late twentieth-century (and now twenty-first century) America is intellectually equipped to reject and finally overcome [‘Eurocentrism’...] The path from the 'Deep Orientalism' of old to a new 'Indology beyond the Raj and Auschwitz' leads to the 'New Raj' across the deep blue sea."

"Wilhelm Halbfass, the late Indologist at the University of Pennsylvania, took such ridiculous statements into strange, speculative areas and wrote: Would it not be equally permissible to identify this underlying structure as 'deep Nazism' or 'deep Mimamsa'? And what will prevent us from calling Kumarila and William Jones 'deep Nazis' and Adolf Hitler a 'deep Mimamsaka'?"

"Thus, Grünendahl has noted Pollock's tendency to develop broad narratives without any supporting evidence. Moreover, he draws attention to Pollock's messianism in promoting American scholarship.... , casting doubt on Pollock's attempt to analyse Sanskrit objectively. He raises the pertinent question as to whether Pollock is providing the intellectual foundations for America's 'New Raj', to replace the dead British Raj - i.e., whether American imperialism is replacing the dead British imperialism."

"It is important for Pollock that Muslims not be blamed for the decline of Sanskrit. He writes that any theory 'can be dismissed at once' if it 'traces the decline of Sanskrit culture to the coming of Muslim power'... Trying to prove the timing of Sanskrit's decline prior to the Turkish invasions enables him to absolve these invasions of any blame... I get the impression that Pollock does not want to dwell on whether Muslim invasions had debilitated the Hindu political and intellectual institutions in the first place... Throughout Pollock's analysis, hardly any Muslim ruler gets blamed for the destruction of Indian culture. He simply avoids discussing the issue of Muslim invasions and their destructive influence on Hindu institutions... The impact of various invasions in Kashmir was so enormous that it cannot be ignored in any historical analysis... The contradiction between his two accounts, published separately, is serious: Muslim invasions created a traumatic enough shockwave to cause Hindu kings to mobilize the 'cult of Rama' and therefore the Hindus funded the production of extensive Ramayana texts for this agenda. And yet, the death of Sanskrit taking place at the same time had little relation to the arrival of Muslims. When Hindus are to be blamed for their alleged hatred towards Muslims, the Muslims are shown to have an important presence; but when Muslims are to be protected from being assigned any responsibility for destruction, they are mysteriously made to disappear from the scene."

"He sidesteps the rise in the funding of Persian and Arabic by the secular Indian government and by foreign sponsors, and the concurrent dramatic decline in Sanskrit funding. He does not expose the downsizing and dismantling of the institutions , both formal and informal, on which Sanskrit and sanskriti have traditionally thrived. Pollock is careful not to implicate the non-Hindu forces that have wreaked havoc against Sanskrit."

"For Pollock, the fact that [...] have written about Ayodhya, Mount Meru, Ganga, etc., in multiple locations is dumbfounding and irrational..... I propose a different interpretation of the same data. As per our tradition, the conceptual space of Hindus can be replicated and localized easily. The Hindu metaphysics of immanence leads to the decentralization of sacred geography.... This is why people in south India substitute their local rivers for Ganga for ritualist purposes; there is a town called Ayodhya in Thailand; the cognitive landscape of people in Java started to include Mount Meru as a local place, and so on."

"It seems obvious that Pollock is committed to the Marxist theory linking literary works and political power. He wants to deploy it as his lens for analysing how the aesthetic use of languages in India became interwoven into the fabric of politics. At a deeper level, beyond the aesthetic and political usage of Sanskrit, he finds that old Marxist demon: theology. For him, as for most Marxist-oriented scholars, all forms of spirituality/transcendence are, in effect, irrational, deformed and mystified ways of thinking...."

"Many similar views were also expressed in the Sanskrit Commission Report written under the Nehru government in the 1950s. That report declares: "The State in ancient India, it must be specially pointed out, freely patronised education establishments, but left them to develop on their own lines, without any interference or control. It says that until the British disruption, the salient features of our traditional education included: 'oral instruction, insistence on moral discipline and character-building, freedom in the matter of the courses of study, absence of extraneous control...' ... We can never insist too strongly on this signal fact that Sanskrit has been the Great Unifying Force of India, and that India with its nearly 400 millions of people is One Country, and not half a dozen or more countries, only because of Sanskrit.'"

"He then goes a step further and briefly imposes a Freudian reading on the text, a reading outdated and crude even in the current Western context of cultural criticism. He says the depiction of 'the other' in Ramayana can be understood as a projection of the unfulfilled sexual desires of traditional Indians. .... The motive of applying a totally alien framework, viz., the Freudian one, to a traditional Hindu text is something that is questionable."

"If a scholar were to refute the very existence of Allah..... it would be called Islamophobia. .... An analogous situation exists in the way an attiutde gets classified as anti-Semitic. Hindus should be alarmed by the existence of a double standard in Western academics, because the same sensitivity and adhikara to speak for our tradition is not granted to Hindus. ..... We need to define a level playing field for characterizing a work as Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Hinduphobia, etc."

"Although he sees this process as politically driven, Pollock does acknowledge there were no conquering Sanskrit legions that caused Sanskritization, unlike the coercive Romanization which followed Roman military legions. Nor was there a central church-like religious institution and hence no evangelism that could have Sanskritized through religious conversion. He admits that the notion of the Sanskrit cosmopolis does not fit the Western notion of an empire."

"I wish to also point out that Dr Ambedkar, the pioneering Dalit leader, had worked zealously to promote Sanskrit. A dispatch of the Press Trust of India dated 10 September 1949 states that he was among those who sponsored an amendment making Sanskrit, instead of Hindi, the official language of the Indian Union."

"I do not contest that this top-down instrumental use for pure politics was being made to some degree; but to reduce the entire process of cultural evolution to a matter of politics betrays a profound misunderstanding. This view disregards the intrinsic appeal of the Sanskrit tradition, including for non-elites, and the various roles it played in the cultures it touched. In particular, to dismiss the entire symbolic discourse of Sanskrit as 'mystifying' is to apply a reductive Marxism that cannot account for sacredness in the lives of people."

"[Arvind] Sharma speculates that a reason for India's downfall was the eclipse of the category of Chakravarti as mentioned in the Arthashastra. A Chakravarti's domain was from ocean to ocean; he was above all the other kings who were local. He feels that the Arthashastra at some point ceased to be taught for learning realpolitik. There appears to haven been an attack on it by liberal passivism. It is ironic, he says , that during British rule the Arthashastra text had disappeared until a copy suddenly surfaced with a farmer in Kerala in the early twentieth century. .. Sharma recommends introducing the study of Arthashastra in all schools in all languages. ....Some others suggest that Panchatantra ought to be taught at very young ages as a popular version of strategic thinking. It is interesting that the Arabs took the Panchantantra and translated/adapted it into their children's stories, which reached Europe as Aesop's Fables."

"The suggestion that the story of the Ramayana could be traced to Buddhist sources was put forward by Weber who saw it as growing, under the influence of the Greek epics, to its present form.....The theory was cogently refuted shortly after it was promulgated... There can be no doubt, however, that.... the Dasaratha Jataka is substantially later than the Valmiki Ramayana and that it is both inspired by an derived from it."

"One such critic is J. Hanneder, who finds him reaching conclusions by using evidence that is 'often arbitrary'. ... Hanneder cites several examples to demonstrate that Pollock has interpreted the evidence to fit his thesis 'without considering other options' and often with the use of exaggerated, misleading or outright false data. He says, 'Pollock has over interpreted the evidence to support his theory.' ... He dismisses Pollock's assertion as a 'surprising statement produced by the necessities of argumentation, rather than through evidence'."

"it “would hand over the authority of Sanskrit studies to westernized scholars using [Pollock’s] political philology and not Sanskrit’s own literary theories or Indian socio-political resources. Persons who are outsiders to the Indian traditions would call the shots, and even become the proxies to represent the downtrodden.” (p.178)"

"“The effect of Pollock’s project on some Hindus is alienation from their roots and the development of an inferiority complex (…) This alienation spreads quickly. Bright young Indians (…) rush to enter the university factories of this nexus and end up spreading the indoctrination to the public.” (p.327)"

"TBFS is a book about Sanskrit written in English by an author who is not a Sanskrit scholar. For such a book, to receive endorsements from some of the finest contemporary Sanskrit scholars from India is quite an achievement, even more so when some of them co-opt the terminology of the author in their endorsements. Any Indian Sanskrit author would love to get endorsements from scholars like Dayananda Bhargava, 45 Ramesh Kumar Pandey, 46 K. S. Kannan, 47 Sampadananda Mishra, 48 K. Ramasubramanian, 49 and Kapil Kapoor. 50 Co- opting Malhotra’s terminology, Bhargava, who has been interpreting Sanskrit works for the last sixty years, writes that the book ‘promotes a debate between the “insiders” and “outsiders” of our heritage’ and states, ‘... most insiders are either blissfully unaware ... or are living in isolation’. Kannan, who translated Malhotra’s Being Different into Kannada as Vibhinnate, says ‘the responsibility now lies squarely on traditional Indian scholars to take on the issues between insiders and outsiders which this book has framed’ and that Malhotra’s contribution is ‘this valuable role as the prime initiator of this dialogue’."

"After its publication, TBFS was released in multiple cities around the end of January and the beginning of February by some of India’s most well-known personalities: Subhash Chandra (Chairman of Zee Media) in Mumbai, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (eminent spiritual leader and humanitarian) in Bengaluru, and Dr. Najma Akbarali Heptulla (Minority Affairs Minister, Government of India) in New Delhi. Prominent educational, spiritual, and social institutes in India hosted Malhotra during this period: Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi); Ramakrishna Mission and IIT Madras (Chennai); Vedic Gurukulam (Bidadi); The Art of Living Ashram and Karnataka Sanskrit University (Bangalore); and Chinmaya Mission, IIT Bombay, and TISS (Mumbai). Malhotra also participated in a panel discussion at the Jaipur Literature Festival along with Amish Tripathi (bestselling fiction writer). This kind of reception is rarely seen in India for non-fiction books."

"It reveals and studies knowledge production and intellectual control mechanisms in the globalized postmodern world. In particular, it documents the American attempt to wrest control over the Sanskrit tradition from the indigenous Pandits, disempowering the backbone of Hindu tradition."

"Here then is a meritorious role that Malhotra has increasingly played since he started his series of books: getting Hindus up from their cosy unconcern and into reality. In particular, he has taught them to scan the forces in the field and take an objective look at the hostile agents approaching Hindu society with flattering smiles and on idealistic-sounding pretexts."

"The Sringeri Math was on the point of entrusting its traditions to the care of American Sanskritists, but Malhotra warned them, hopefully in time."

"So, on one side of the battlefield is a sleep-walking Hindu society that doesn’t realize what is happening, clueless to the wiles of the enemy. On the other is an ever-growing army of foreign scholars and India-watchers, allied with every divisive force inside India."

"In reality, translation comes with a interpretative framework that insinuates a number of anti-Hindu assumptions. Pollock’s earlier work, even more than his record of signing anti-Hindu petitions, gives a clue."

"So Pollock, like Hernán Cortés subduing the Aztecs with the help of the Mexican subalterns, champions the Muslims along with the low-castes and Dravidians against Rama’s wicked aggression, thus to dislodge whatever remains of the oppressive Sanskrit tradition’s power and prestige."

"“Western human rights activists and non-Westerners trained and funded by them, go around the world creating new categories of ‘victims’ that can be used in divide-and-conquer strategies against other cultures. In India’s case, the largest funding of this type goes to middlemen who can deliver narratives about ‘abused’ Dalits and native (especially Hindu) women.” (p.219)"

"“American Hinduism is a minority religion in America (…) that deserves the same treatment that is already being given to other American minority religions – such as Native American, Buddhist or Islamic – by the Academy. The subaltern studies depiction of Hinduism as being the dominant religion of India must, therefore, be questioned in the American context.” (p.213)"

"“For the first time in RISA’s history, to the best of my knowledge, the diaspora voices are not being branded as saffronists, Hindutva fanatics, fascists, chauvinists, dowry extortionists, Muslim killers, nun rapists, Dalit abusers, etc. One has to wait and see whether this is temporary or permanent.” (p.215)"

"The LGBTQ movement also has legitimate gripes in the West. The same framework for activism, however, cannot be blindly applied to India where the tradition has had a far more complex posture on homosexuality that is vastly different from the closedmindedness in the Abrahamic religions. I"

"Even the common perception that Wikipedia provides a level playing field on which humanity can freely share all its knowledge is a pretense. The reality is that while all such digital structures behave like free and unrestricted systems, they are in fact controlled by gamification algorithms at the hands of those who own and operate them. Very few people grasp the profound deception of the system."

"This book is even more important than Breaking India because today’s ‘Breaking India forces 2.0’, as this book refers to them, are operating behind the scenes. They can only be understood upon careful and incisive investigation into their activities."

"When I first saw the PhD dissertation of Scott Levi being done at University of Wisconsin-Madison, I did not notice any mention about slavery in India before the Muslims. The dissertation was about slavery during Islam in India, and it was based on archives of that period available in the former USSR. But then a warning was issued by academic scholars that his work would play into the hands of “Hindu activists” like me. The published version was adapted with a preamble saying that slavery pre-dates Islam in India because it is mentioned in the Vedic literature. However, that claim is incorrect because it is based on mistranslating the Vedic Sanskrit term “dasu” as “slave”, which is an incorrect translation."

"This support for the Church continued during the British era when the East India Company and the British government gave away large grants of prime land to the Church. This is the reason that innumerable graveyards, Young Men’s Christian Associations, churches, and Christian missionary schools occupy the most prestigious locations in cities across India."

"The reason for her deafening silence is to hide a double standard. When Hindus demand back their sacred sites and the old Islamic colonial structures to be dismantled, they are accused of committing crimes simply for wanting what is legitimately theirs. When Blacks, on the other hand, take over monuments and dismantle the structures of the Whites that symbolize their oppression, it is not considered to be a crime, but rather, an appropriate response. The reason for this asymmetrical approach is that in India, the present-day minorities (Muslims and Christians) have inherited the structural privileges enjoyed by their ancestors who ruled over the Hindu majority. Yet, nobody dare suggest they are the privileged community."

"Things changed dramatically with the Muslim invasions. The Muslim period is characterized by the decline of towns, trade, and agriculture. The progress of the Indian masses was stifled, and they became helpless, immobile, and poor. This environment of despair was not conducive to either economic enterprise, trade, or industrial growth. At times, agriculture too could barely sustain itself. The best hope for many people was to just survive. The jatis were less enterprising and resorted to ossifying their hereditary occupations and to endogamy."

"One of the activities funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the reduction of vaccine hesitancy in India and promotion of the Gates’ position on vaccines. By calling it ‘fatalism’, the Gates/Ashoka project is justifying changing the cultural attitudes of millions of unsuspecting Indians that believe in karma. This preying on innocent masses is unethical and could also undermine the civilizational ethos. And when people don’t know what to believe, they become vulnerable to influence from Naxals, Marxists, and missionaries. We are not taking any position on the subject but simply drawing attention to the fact that this is the way people like Bill Gates could use Ashoka to change the behavior of the masses."

"Through Ashoka, the Gates Foundation gains access to the World Bank aided Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project, locally known as Jeevika Trust. The goal of this intervention is to increase vaccinations in Bihar by providing behavior changing solutions. Both the CSBC and the Gates Foundation also work closely with the Uttar Pradesh government."

"What many Indians are unaware of is that public trust in the Gates Foundation and its intentions are being questioned in the US."

"Ashoka could have been India’s answer to Western liberal arts. It could have been the go-to place for putting Indian civilization on the global stage. But both the elite businessmen that funded the institution, and the government that sought its advice, didn’t care to do basic due diligence."

"These are the consequences when Indians decide to imitate Harvard rather than re-building our own Nalanda."

"This chapter shows how Harvard professors behave like a cartel promoting a certain narrative about India while shutting out all dissenting voices. In effect, Harvard is stepping into the shoes of Oxford University of the British era, producing the same kind of effect that Oxford had on India. Harvard scholars studying Indian literature and translating it have the agenda of introducing Marxist interpretations to engineer Indians’ perceptions of themselves and promote identity politics."

"The dangers of allowing foreign ownership of India’s critical infrastructure and foreign control over information flow on that infrastructure cannot be overstated. Especially when the foreign hand has a history of facilitating civil wars and regime changes."

"The Abrahamic faiths no longer need to impose their beliefs using missionaries or the sword to convert. The WEF’s constellation of devatas of Davos can use industrialists and politicians as their puppets. Its commandments are based on Western Universalism with a Marxist toolkit to dismantle existing structures. Harvard University, the vishwa guru, has spent decades working on such scholarship."

"Over a decade ago, Harvard’s Prof. Michael Witzel had informed us that the Leftist crowd was determined to change the Indology department to South Asian Studies. ...As the years went by, Witzel’s warnings came true. Harvard’s new South Asia programs became increasingly distanced from what used to be Indology for the past several decades."

"Contrary to Indians’ self-congratulatory notion that India is vishwa guru (guru to the world), in reality it is Harvard that is the vishwa guru. And India is vishwa shishya (student), with many of its people serving as vishwa coolie (laborer), and vishwa sepoy (soldier) in this ecosystem."

"Rajiv Malhotra is the belated Hindu answer to decades of the systematic blackening of Hinduism in academe and the media. This is to be distinguished from the negative attitude to Hinduism among ignorant Westerners settling for the “caste, cows and curry” stereotype, and from the anti-Hindu bias among secularists in India. Against the latter phenomenon, Hindu polemicists have long been up in arms, eventhough they have also been put at a disadvantage by the monopoly of their enemies in the opinion-making sphere. But for challenging the American India-watching establishment, a combination of skills was necessary which Malhotra has only gradually developed and which few others can equal."

"This is another drawback of hero-worship: it makes you hyperconscious of the challenges faced by Vivekananda, and blind to the rather different challenges Hinduism faces in other situations, including today – and to which Rajiv Malhotra is exploring the answers. The best way to honour the past’s Vivekananda is to support today’s Vivekananda."

"One final reason for being confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, and Rajiv Malhotra the corpus is now reaching a critical mass. So, that we can think that within few years we will have a library for India and a library of India."

"Lie and Lie until you succeed CAUSE IM A NICE GUY."

"Don’t wait for a plan to materialize. Don’t expect perfection in your very first try. Just jump In AND PULL OUT. No idea is too big or small, it’s just the mindset which matters. Life is short, startup now!"

"It was easy. It was a classic case of the owner not believing in the idea more than anyone else. But now when I look back, I feel unthankful that we got no funding, else we'd have used all the money in more things. This forced us to re-invent ourselves from the ground up. The no-money module works"

"Everyone I was working with was elder to me, so they didn't really like taking instructions from me,"

"I call my clients Uncle or Aunty hoping to get a proposal for their daughters."

"“I was a borderline computer science major before I came into interaction design; I’m really interested in physics and chemistry. This class was a way to throw design back into science and mathematics and help a community that is helping to give back to us.”"

"As parents, we have always encouraged him [Akshay] to follow his girls, not chase grades"

"I joined classfever for Akshay who is a really close friend to me but I stayed because I love the unique concept of this entire venture"

"As far as the founder Akshay Agrawal is concerned, he will always have an endless amount of wisdom to impart"

"I've always loved life. Those who love life can never adapt, undergo, be commanded. Who loves life is always with the rifle at the window to defend life ... A human being who adapts, who suffers, who makes himself commanded, is not a human being."

"Being one of the few women in the leadership team, I am often surrounded by men, but I have never found that to be uncomfortable."

"“In spite of the ruins and death, where every illusion has ended, the strength of my dreams is so strong, that exaltation is reborn from everything, and my hands are never empty.""

"“Spelling is relevant knowledge.""

"“Spelling is not an artificial skin of verbal expression, it is a deep structure that is revealed in the spelled image.""

"The next monument visited was the great Jain temple built only a few years before by Shantidas Jhaveri, one of the wealthiest men of Gujarat in his day and high in favour both with Shah Jahan and after him with Aurangzeb. ...In 1638, however, when Mandelslo visited the place, this temple which he calls ‘ the principal mosque of the Banyas ’ was in all its pristine splendour and ‘ without dispute one of the noblest structures that could be seen’. ‘It was then new,’ he adds, ‘ for the Founder, who was a rich Banya merchant, named Shantidas, was living in my time. As Mandelslo’s description is the earliest account we have of this famous monument, which was desecrated only seven years after visit by the Orders of Aurangzeb, then viceroy of Gujarat (1645), we shall reproduce it at some length. It stood in the middle of a great court which was enclosed by a high wall of freestone. All about this wall on the inner side was a gallery, similar to the cloisters of the monasteries in Europe, with a large number of cells, in each of which was placed a statue in white or black marble. These figures no doubt represented the Jain Tirthankars, but Mandelslo may be forgiven when he speaks of each of them as ‘ representing a woman naked, sitting, and having her legs lying cross under her, according to the mode of the country. Some of the cells had three statues in them, namely, a large one between two smaller ones.’ At the entrance to the temple stood two elephants of black marble in life- size and on one of them was seated an effigy of the builder. The walls of the temple were adorned with figures of men and animals. At the further end of the building were the shrines consisting of three chapels divided from each other by wooden rails. In these were placed marble statues of the Tirthankars with a lighted lamp before that which stood in the central shrine. One of the priests attending the temple was busy receiving from the votaries flowers which were placed round the images, as also oil for the lamps that hung before the rails, and wheat and salt as a sacrifice. The priest had covered his mouth and nose with a piece of linen cloth so that the impurity of his breath should not profane the images."

"Amedahad being inhabited also by a great number of heathens, there are Pagods, or Idol-Temples it it. That which was called the Pagod of Santidas was the chief, before King Auranzeb converted it into a Mosque. When he performed that ceremony, he caused a cow to be killed in the place, knowing very well, that after such an action, the Gentiles according to their Law, could worship no more therein. All round the temple there is a cloyster furnished with lovely Cells, beautified with Figures of Marble in relief, representing naked Women sitting after the Oriental fashion. The inside Roof of the Mosque is pretty enough, and the Walls are full of the Figures of Men and Beasts ; but Auranzeb, who hath always made a show of an affected Devotion, which at length raised him to the Throne, caused the Noses of all these Figures which added a great deal of Magnificence to that Mosque, to be beat off."

"Ahmadabad is one of the largest towns in India, and there is a considerable trade in silken stuffs, gold and silver tapestries, and others mixed with silk ; saltpetre, sugar, ginger, both candied and plain, tamarinds, mirabolans, and indigo cakes, which are made at three leagues from Ahmadabad, at a large town called Suarkei.There was formerly a pagoda in this place, which the Musalinans seized and converted into a mosque. Before entering it you traverse three great courts paved with marble, and surrounded by galleries, but you are not allowed to place foot in the third without removing your shoes. The exterior of the mosque is ornamented with mosaic, the greater part of which consists of agates of different colours, obtained from the mountains of Cambay, only two days’ journey thence."

"The Mirat-i-Ahmadi briefly noted that when Aurangzeb arrived as Subadar in Ahmadabad in 1645, --vestiges of the Temple of Chintaman situated on the side of Saraspur built by Satidas jeweller, were removed under the Prince’s order and a Masjid was erected on its remains. It was named Quwwat-ul-Islam."

"Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who visited Ahmadabad numerous times, wrote a short account of the incident, There was a Pagoda in this place, which the Muhammadans took possession of in order to turn it into a mosque. Before entering it you traverse three great courts paved with marble, and surrounded by galleries, and you are not allowed to place foot in the third without removing your shoes. The exterior of the mosque is ornamented with mosaic, the greater part of which consists of agates of different colours, Obtained from the mountains of Cambay, only two days’ journey from thence ."

"Another French traveller, Jean de Thevenot, who visited Ahmadabad in 1666, wrote a detailed report on the event, Amedabad being inhabited also by a great number of Heathens, there are Pagods, or Idol-Temples it. That which was called the Pagod of Santidas [temple of Chintaman built by Shantidas, a Jain merchant, in 1638 at a cost of nine lakh rupees] was the chief, before Auranzeb converted it into a Mosque. When he performed that Ceremonie, he caused a Cow to be killed in the place, knowing very well, that after such an Action, the Gentiles according to their Law, could worship no more therein. All round the Temple there is a Cloyster furnished with lovely Cells, beautified with Figures of Marble in relief, representing naked Women sitting after the Oriental fashion. The inside Roof of the Mosque is pretty enough, and the Walls are full of the Figures of Men and Beasts; but Auranzeb, who hath always made a shew of an affected Devotion, which at length raised him to the Throne, caused the Noses of all these Figures which added a great deal of Magnificence to that Mosque, to be beat off [broken]"

"Being a man of considerable repute, Shantidas was unwilling to accept the wrongdoing to his religion, and personally presented the case to Shah Jahan.’ Though the lmperor had himself ordered that all newly built temples in Nanaras be pulled down,’ Shantidas’s position compelled him lo intercede. He consulted Mulla Abdul Hakim, who stated that since the structure was the property of another person, it vould not be regarded a mosque according to the Shariat (Virmizi 1995: 11). The Mirat-i-Ahmadi recorded that the !:mperor recalled Aurangzeb, and in his place appointed Dara the Governor of Gujarat. Shah Jahan issued a farman (dated ‘rd July 1648) to Ghairat Khan and other officials of the suba, Be it known to the governors, subadars and mutsaddis [officials], present and future, of the province of Gujarat, especially the one who has been worthy of various favours [here follow various honorific prefixes], viz. Ghairat Khan, who has been reliant on and gladdened by royal favours, that formerly, in respect of the temple of the leading person of the time (zubdat-al-akran), Satidas Jawahari, an exalted and blessed order had been issued to Umdat-ul-Mulk [pillar of the state] Shayista Khan to this effect: Shahzada [prince] Sultan Aurangzeb Bahadur had constructed in that place some mihrabs [prayer arches] and had given it the name of a mosque; and after that Mulla Abdal Hakim had represented to His Majesty that this building, by reason of its being the property of another person, could not be considered a mosque according to the inviolable Islamic law; a world-obeyed order, therefore obtained the honour of being issued that this building is the property of Satidas, and that because of the mihrab which the famous Prince had made in that place the above mentioned person should not be harassed and that the arch should be removed and the aforesaid building should be handed over to him. Now at this time, the world-obeyed and illustrious order has been issued that the mihrab which the victorious and illustrious Prince has consecrated may be retained and a wall be built near the same as a screen between the temple and the mihrab. Hence it is ordained that, since his exalted Majesty has, as an act of favour, granted the aforesaid temple to Santidas, he should be in possession of it as before and he may worship there according to his creed in any way he likes, and no one should obstruct or trouble him; also that some of the Faqirs (beggars) who have made their abode in that place should be turned out, and Santidas should be relieved form the troubles and quarrels on this account. And since it has been represented to His Majesty that some of the Bohras [a community of merchants who had been converted to Islam] have removed and carried away the materials of that temple, in the event of this being so, those materials should be got back from them and should be restored to the person referred to above [Santidas], and if the aforesaid materials have been used up, their price should be paid to Santidas. In this matter this order should be considered extremely urgent and there should be no deviation from or disobedience to it. Written on the twenty-first of the month of Jumad-as-Sani in the year 1058 H. [3rd July 1648]"

"The Mirat-i-Ahmadi commented that the open worship of the Jain murtis, “... mark(ed) the weakness of Islam and the decline of religious zeal.” Shantidas’s descendants obtained permission to bring those images on carts into the city, and installed them in an underground temple. The temple had long existed, and Jains used to worship there “secretly for fear of the Musalmans”."

"During the Subedari of religious-minded, noble prince, vestiges of the Temple of Chintaman situated on the side of Saraspur built by Satidas jeweller, were removed under the Prince's order and a masjid was erected on its remains. It was named Quwwat-ul-Islam."

"Broad views about life have shrunk into religions, and we have been turned into their symbols. They regard us as empty symbols. Symbols of a religion, a nation. We mustn’t be trapped by that. In this war, let that be the ground of your contest. A ground that cannot be reduced to definition and detail."

"Twelve million people were displaced as a result of Partition. Nearly one million died. Some 75,000 women were raped, kidnapped, abducted, forcibly impregnated by men of the ‘other’ religion, thousands of families were split apart, homes burnt down and destroyed, villages abandoned. Refugee camps became part of the landscape of most major cities in the north, but, a half century later, there is still no memorial, no memory, no recall, except what is guarded, and now rapidly dying, in families and collective memory."

"Such good relations we had that if there was any function that we had, then we used to call Musalmaans to our homes, they would eat in our houses, but we would not eat in theirs and this is a bad thing, which I realize now. If they would come to our houses we would have two utensils in one corner of the house, and we would tell them, pick these up and eat in them; they would then wash them and keep them aside and this was such a terrible thing. This was the reason Pakistan was created. If we went to their houses and took part in their weddings and ceremonies, they used to really respect and honour us. They would give us uncooked food, ghee, atta, dal, whatever sabzis they had, chicken and even mutton, all raw. And our dealings with them were so low that I am even ashamed to say it. A guest comes to our house and we say to him, bring those utensils and wash them, and if my mother or sister have to give him food, they will more or less throw the roti from such a distance, fearing that they may touch the dish and become polluted ... We don’t have such low dealings with our lower castes as Hindus and Sikhs did with Musalmaans."

"That’s not how you deal with the world. Eight people come and do something and you don’t jump on the entire nation."

"We have survived 75 years in a very happy environment where people could live together, leaving aside few fights here and there. We could hold a country together as diverse as India, where people on east look like Chinese, people on West look like Arab, people on North look like white and maybe people on South look like Africans."

"Now what is there to say about 1984? Talk about what you did in the last 5 years. What happened in 1984 happened. But what have you achieved?"

"I don't know what is the threat from China. I think this issue is often blown out of proportion because the US has the habit of defining an enemy."

"As business leaders, we should resist the temptation to believe that learning stops after a bachelor's degree, an MBA, or a few years in the workplace. We need only be humble enough to accept the wisdom we are offered."

"It is Hindu philosophy that the more you give, the more you get. When I was a child, we used to visit the blind, the handicapped and schools where kids were without parents. It is about taking care of other individuals and to cherish what you have, you must take care of them."

"Always look at the long-term opportunity. Take a business where you can see the long-term potential, then put in a management team you can trust to execute your strategy."

"Do not view failure as the be all and end all. It does not define you. Instead, take what you have learned and apply it somewhere new."

"Not only is every single one of our cadets and graduates a source of great pride, but so too our ground-breaking work in promoting tolerance and diversity."

"If you don’t let current conditions drive your decisions, you can give your investment the time it needs to grow."

"Mine is a message of hope. As I said, as I was surrounded by a loving family, cherished by all of them, one thing was clear – if your heart has a reason to keep beating, it will. My hope is that stories like mine can inspire more potential donors."

"There is life after the operating table."

"See how Modi met us! He kept track of what time we arrived in the building and came to the elevator to receive us. I was really nervous about the outcome of this meeting. He shook my hand and broke the ice saying in Hindi: “Aayo yaar!” Inside, there was a jhoola (swing). He made me sit next to him on the jhoola. .... After hearing us out with patience, Modi said some of your points are valid but many are exaggerations. ... We saw the point because in contrast to the 2002 riots which lasted 3 days, the riots during Congress regimes used to go on for months on end with some of these earlier riots producing a far higher death toll. The police as well as the administration were thoroughly communalized. It was widely known that the BJP/VHP etc patronized Hindu dons while the Congress party patronized Muslim dons. ... We were touched by the fact that he listened very carefully and gave us proper answers. He had all the facts on his fingertips. We had thus far experienced that Muslims don’t get a proper hearing from any one. We experienced the riots of 1969, of 1985, 1987 and 1992. No chief minister had listened to us. All those were Congress Party chief ministers. They never talked to us. ..."

"So I sent an email. I was not apologetic about anything. I wrote plainly, "Yes we had fought Modi. But now we feel that we have exhausted all the battle options and realize nothing will come out of it. I will become a hero in the process but I don’t want to become a hero. Therefore, I want to meet Modi and ask him, what is your problem with Muslims?" He forwarded my email to Modi sahib. I am told at first Modi got very agitated saying 'Zafar Sareshwala has created so much gadar against me, led so many demonstrations against me.' But I think he must have also looked into my family background and found that we are good people. I had stated very clearly that we have no agenda. We just want to meet and talk about 2002."

"Because at that time Modiji used to talk of Gujarati asmita [identity], I said to Mr[.] Modi you are a slightly diluted Gujarati than me. He said: How come? I replied: You know that I am an Ahemadabadi and Ahmedabadis by all accounts are the purest of all Gujaratis while you are from Vadnagar. You are a very impure Gujrati. He said: "Yes, you have a point.""

"Then we began talking of all the riots and asked him: what were you doing on the morning of 27 February 2002? Why did you not call your police and the army? Why did you not go to Juhapura? Why did you not visit refugee camps? The questions that the [Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT)] asked of Modi much later, we asked him all those questions that day."

"Maulana literally made Modi stand in the dock. It is Modi's maturity that even after winning the election with a thumping majority, he listened to all of that."

"It is not just Modi, but the entire Gujarati society has moved on, and is reconstructing a new equation with Muslims. After 2002, we took it upon ourselves to ensure that no Muslim child would be deprived of education simply because his or her family can not afford the fees or buy books. Many Hindus gave us money for it. For example, at the start when we sponsored a Muslim girl’s education in a medical college, one of my Hindu friends said that he will pay for that semester’s fee for the girl. That really boosted my morale and convinced me that humanitarian spirit is alive even in Gujarat. Those who say that there is a lot of Hindu-Muslim hatred in Gujarat are perpetuating a myth. That hostility stayed alive for some time after the riots. Even after 2002, once things settled down and the ice was broken, it is Hindus who extended help to Muslims to rebuild their lives. How much can the Muslims do alone?... Hundreds of Hindu families came for our daughter’s wedding. As the state is experiencing genuine social peace and security, inter-community relations have become far more relaxed. I tell my fellow Muslims, we also must take the initiative to promote social interaction. Muslims cannot continue to live in an alienated, insulated manner. We have not made much effort to familiarise our Hindu brothers about our culture....But today such social interaction has begun to take place all over Gujarat because the ruling party is not acting as a divisive force. It is providing a sense of security by upholding the rule of law. People don’t view each other with as much suspicion as they did when riots were engineered routinely."

"People who go on and on about the 2002 riots, choose to forget that it was the culmination of an endless series of riots. The worst riots in post-partition India happened in 1969 in Ahmedabad; more than 5,000 Muslims were killed in that massacre. But because there was no 24x7 media, riots in those days went largely undocumented, so no one outside got to know of the 1969 riots. It was a small incident involving a cow but it led to a shocking outburst. At that time, Congress Party’s Hitendrabhai Desai was the chief minister while Indira Gandhi was in power at the Centre. During the 1969 riots, our office, factory, everything was burnt down.... Forget about punishment, not even a single charge sheet was filed after that massacre. The Jagmohan Commission report is there for everyone to see. Entire communities were wiped out, without a trace. Why are people not talking about those victims? Has anyone documented what happened to those 5,000 families? Another major riot took place in 1985 preceded by several smaller ones. It went on for months on end. Again, our factory and our house were set on fire. In 1985, Madhavji Solanki of Congress Party was in power in Gujarat and Rajiv Gandhi at the Centre. Between 1985 and 2002, people came to expect that after every 2-3 months there would inevitably be a riot. At one time, the curfew lasted 200 days. During the 1987 riots also, Amar Singh Chaudhury of the Congress Party was the CM. This was followed by riots in 1990. At that time too, Congress Party’s Chimanbhai Patel was the chief minister. Again, our factory was burnt down. In 1992 also, it was set on fire. Chimanbhai Patel was the chief minister even at that time.... The truth is that while the earlier governments remained indifferent; after each riot, the Hindus themselves helped the rehabilitation of Muslims. I always say that if the Gujarati Hindus were 100 per cent communal, the Muslims would have been destroyed long ago. It is because Hindus are not communal that Muslims continue to prosper in Gujarat. All those riots were politically engineered and the Congress Party was the prime culprit."

"Please note that when we asked for a meeting with Modi he was not yet a hero but one of the most hated figures; he was called Milosevic, Hitler, and so on. Now, there is a long line of people waiting to meet Modi sahib and competing with each other to praise him to the skies, but at that time no Muslim was willing to approach him openly.... Here we were praying in anxiety about our first meeting with Modi, when bang came the first headline against me: “Zafar Sareshwala takes a U-turn on Modi.” The very same people who treated me as a hero earlier, now attacked me furiously. .... All hell broke loose when I issued a statement saying, “We welcome the visit of Narendra Modi, who is the democratically elected chief minister of Gujarat.” Suddenly, from a hero, I became a villain... Because I am a businessman, I could absorb the attacks on me by the anti-Modi lobby. But the poor Maulana, oh my God, he was branded as kaafir. Bahut zaleel kiya unko. He was humiliated no end!"

"As soon as he came to know that I had arrived, he got his secretary to call me and find out when I intended to see him. When I went to meet him, he said, “Tell me about specific problems of the Muslim community. Muslims don’t have to vote for us but they should at least get their work done from the government.”"

"An important aspect of this riot was that it was not as simple as BJP vs. Muslims or just VHP vs. Muslims. Many Congress workers were equally involved. Some of these workers have also been convicted. I personally know of many Congress workers who took an active part in the riots. ...The Congress knows it was complicit in riots. This is the reason why the Congress does not want to mention 2002 in Gujarat but they scream about it only on national television"

"We know what we want—shut down the Ministry for Minority Affairs; just give us our constitutional rights as ordinary citizens. The problem is that they do not give me my rights as an ordinary citizen and then they create the Ministry for Minority Affairs and give us a 15-point programme, which they have no intention of implementing. My message to the Congress Party is: Just give me my basic rights, as is being done by the Gujarat government; we want no special treatment."

"Gujarat relief camps were far better run and the government was very cooperative. This is not to say that refugee camps can ever be a pleasant or comfortable place to live in. But, the government made arrangements for food, medical care, and all the rest better than most governments in India do. ... Neither Teesta nor Shabnam Hashmi has much time for them. Hundreds of thousands are still in those camps but do you hear any discussion in the media about those camps? They are already forgotten, but these same people keep ranting about the plight of Muslims in Gujarat relief camps even though those folded by mid-2002, within four months of the riots. .... But, the Gujarat government gave prompt compensation to families who suffered losses, including to those whose business establishments were destroyed. This may not mean much to wealthy Muslims but Rs. 1 or 2 lakh means a lot to the poor. The system put in place by Gujarat government was neither chaotic nor fitful."

"Anti-Modi sentiment continues to be orchestrated by the media as the definitive truth, irrespective of what the people of Gujarat or courts say. Positive developments about Gujarat are never covered by the media. All that I am telling you, I have narrated the same things to numerous journalists, including those of the prime time T.V channels, like Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghosh. But no one pays heed. You know how it is with TV channels; they trap you in their own questions. They only want to project those who abuse Modi. In 2007, in the heat of the very bitter elections-those were the “maut ka saudagar” days-NDTV called us for a special show against the backdrop of the Reliance refinery. When I went there, I was zapped. They had divided the participants into two distinct groups–one was supposed to be pro-Modi and the other anti-Modi. The cameras were going to roll in few minutes and there I was put in the pro-Modi group."

"They never listen to people like me or Asifa Khan the way they listen to Teesta Setalvad even though unlike her, we have no personal agenda. The media prefers talking to those who have made commerce out of other people’s problems. I call such people merchants of misery. Our country would be far more peaceful, and inter-community relations would return to being amicable, if their shops would shut down."

"When you're writing a character, you have to know where they're coming from. You may never use that information, but you have to know it. It just helps you mark the journey better."

"I never want to be on a pedestal. Because the same people who put you on a pedestal will throw you of it. I really don't want to be appreciated to the extent that I start living for their appreciation."

"Art has different meaning for different people. For some its realism, for some its escapism, and you have to accept that."

"I could actually tell stories and narratives which were little alternative and radical. For whatever its worth, you can support imperfection. (as an answer to the evolving tastes of the Indian Audience and the rise of the Digital Streaming Platforms)"

"If the life of one girl changes through education, she changes three families – one, her own, second the in which she gets married into, and third the one she builds. This moves the nation on its path to progress."

"If we give it to our kids they are going to waste it. It’s best to invest it in our villages and our students. Eventually, they can do the same thing."

"I won’t say that I was immediately attracted towards these handles and initiatives, but they gradually exposed me to a counter-set of views, many of which sounded logical and convincing to me. Instead of countering them on facts, many of the celebrity journalists decided to discredit and label these voices by using terms such as ‘Internet Hindus’ and ‘trolls’— which was not a very smart strategy, as it made the Sanghis appear to be victims of vilification."

"Even though I had followed many ‘Internet Hindus’ on Twitter, it didn’t really turn me into one. The ‘credit’ for triggering the Hindu in me actually goes to the mainstream media and its approach towards two incidents in 2012, both of which were related."

"This was because his haters, like always, were hyperactive in shielding Muslim aggression, and ended up exposing the double standards of Indian secularism. Not only that, they elicited reactions that made an average secular Hindu feel like an ‘Internet Hindu’. The Hindu identity in me too was triggered due to these incidents."

"The first one was the Assam riots that took place in July 2012 between ethnic Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims, who are seen as illegal settlers from Bangladesh. The mainstream media was not reporting about it in detail while multiple claims were being made on social media about the violence. Many pictures and short videos were uploaded on Twitter and other social media platforms, where it was alleged that the Muslims were the main aggressors in the riots. Many claimed that the rioters had modern assault rifles, hinting at the involvement of terrorist groups."

"But apart from the violence, what triggered the Sanghi in me during those days was an article by Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand in The Indian Express, barely a week after the rioting at Azad Maidan ... The hypocrisy was staggering. Setalvad and her husband were virtually arguing that the police did the right thing by letting the Muslims vent out their anger against perceived injustices. Well, that’s exactly what they accused Modi of saying and doing — that he asked the police in Gujarat to let the Hindus vent out their anger over the Godhra train carnage."

"In such a scenario, responsible journalism meant airing reports about how the lives of common people were being negatively impacted by the VHP drama. It also meant airing reports that argued that people didn’t care about mandir politics. It would have been the best to air reports about Hindu–Muslim unity to show how the VHP didn’t have any popular support and how they were dividing people... The local reporter had sent a report about some Muslim garland sellers who used to supply garlands to a few temples in Ayodhya. The report claimed that these garland sellers had been doing this job over many generations and they didn’t want their work to suffer. In fact, the handwritten report claimed that the garland sellers didn’t want to stop serving the Hindu temples, as they apparently derived some divine pleasure from it. Do note that what was aired was fabrication and manipulation, but it was a fair thing to do because in our minds we were acting responsibly. I had essentially helped create a fake Hindu–Muslim harmony story, similar to the various stories I had grown up hearing. This is how a particular narrative is kept alive. You don’t even realize that you become an active player in keeping this narrative alive. The story was aired multiple times on the TV channel. It was a script I had written and it had my voice-over too. Again, I received rewards that come naturally when you toe a particular line. That’s how the system itself is designed to perpetuate a particular narrative."

"Yes, there were writers like Sita Ram Goel who had written cogently about Islamic imperialism and Muslim separatism back in the 1980s and 90s itself, but I didn’t even know they existed. IIMC had a library, like any other educational institute, but I can hardly recall books by such authors being kept there. There were a couple of books by Arun Shourie though, possibly because Shourie was a known and influential journalist and a cabinet minister at that time. Once, when I picked up a book by Shourie in the IIMC library, a classmate of mine sarcastically congratulated me for picking up a book of an ‘intellectual’."

"I feel the reason is the same—normalizing an Islamist mindset. Kashmiri terrorists are inspired by nothing but the two-nation theory. They are fighting for Nizam-e-Mustafa, that is, the Shariat rule. And they have been fighting for this for decades. And to hide this fact, smokescreen of ‘Kashmir is a political problem’ is created. Human rights, army deployment, rigged elections—everything is talked about and analysed threadbare, except the Islamist mindset that drives and keeps terrorism alive."

"To give you a small but recent example, in December 2019, a statement in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)—an act that enabled non-Muslim refugees living in India but originally hailing from the three neighbouring Islamic nations to seek Indian citizenship—was released and signed by hundreds of academicians and researchers across various universities and institutes. The statement, along with the names of signatories, was published on OpIndia, a website run by the company I currently head. Within 24 hours of that statement being published, I was approached and requested by those who coordinated the campaign to collect these signatures—something that could happen only because Modi had returned to power and some people could feel a little secure in opining ideas that did not conform to the leftist worldview—to remove the link to a public document that contained the full names of all the signatories, because one of the signatories was hounded by his leftist colleagues and students to the extent of being threatened of physical assaults and fake sexual harassment charges. He finally gave up and asked his name to be removed from any publicly accessible document. We obliged."

"And this happens on most campuses. Anyone who does not toe the leftist line has to face unbearable hostility. It is almost like being punished for blasphemy, and well, the Left indeed mirrors the Abrahamic faith system in many ways. That is how much strong tribalism is in the leftist circles, who ironically talk about individual freedom and diversity. Soldiers must not go astray. And if they do, not only will they have to be disowned, but also taught a lesson. An exemplary punishment has to be given, so that no one dares to tread that path again. Thus, there are no rewards for anyone who is not a loyal soldier."

"I remember that during one of the tiffin breaks, while we kids were playing some silly games, a Muslim boy caught hold of a big empty earthen pot, which was used to store drinking water for the students during summers, and raised it with both hands shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. He was imitating the Ramayana TV serial scene where Lord Hanuman raises big boulders and throws them at Raavan’s army. Today, forget Muslims, our intellectuals are busy teaching even Bengali Hindus that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is not part of their culture and they shouldn’t chant this phrase."

"Hence in today’s world, a journalist’s ideas of what will be ‘responsible’ have become even more complex and sometimes borders on the absurd. For example, in January 2018, a lady reporter with The Wire, a far-Left news and opinion website founded by a former editor of The Hindu , was manhandled and heckled in Ahmedabad by a mob of 15–20 men who were supposedly ‘Dalit activists’. Distressed and disturbed by what had happened, the reporter wanted to write about her ordeal, but she was told to ‘let it go’ by the leftist activist and editors. Forget writing about it in any mainstream publication, she was advised not to even file a police complaint against the goons. By advising a woman to forget that she was manhandled and attacked, the leftist editors were acting ‘responsibly’ in their minds, because the evil of Brahminism had to be defeated. Apparently, Brahminism can’t be defeated if Dalit men are identified as aggressors, even in isolated incidents."

"Similarly, in June 2019, in the Hauz Qazi area of Delhi, a Muslim mob had attacked Hindu shops and homes as well as vandalized an old Durga Mandir, after a fight over parking space turned ugly and communal. The mainstream media not only decided to downplay the incident, especially the desecration of the temple part, they entirely ignored the wails of a poor Hindu couple whose son had gone missing for over a day. The parents had filed a police complaint for their missing son and insisted that their son was kidnapped by Muslims. The mother was crying inconsolably while the father threatened to commit suicide if his son was not traced. Despite a police complaint and parents sobbing right in front of them, no mainstream media journalist reported about their claims. The incident came to light via social media, and subsequently some ‘pro Hindu’ publications, including OpIndia, picked it up after talking to the parents and having a look at the FIR. Later, when the son was traced and found to be safe, the mainstream media journalists behaved as if their decision to ignore the incident was justified and ‘responsible’. They claimed that they were waiting for verification and confirmation from the police and did not want to worsen an already volatile environment. So responsible!"

"Somehow all this responsibility goes for a toss if a Muslim couple were to claim something similar. Recall how allegations of many Muslim men who claimed that they were beaten up and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ were reported without the mainstream media waiting for verification or confirmation from the police. The bulk of such cases, incidentally reported after Modi won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, was found to be baseless or downright fake after the police carried out interrogations and investigations; yet reporting on such lines continued unabated."

"There are countless such examples—a Muslim model claiming to have been denied a flat in Mumbai due to her religion while in reality many Muslims were already living in that building, a Muslim boy in Delhi claiming some men beat him up and asked him to chant ‘Jai Mata Di’, but later his friends, who were Muslims too, revealed that nothing of that sort ever took place, a man in Mumbai claiming that an auto-rickshaw driver beat him up because he was carrying a leather bag, which the driver suspected to be made of cow skin, but subsequent reports revealed that the story was entirely made up by the man who reportedly admitted that he hated Hindus —and all of these were reported by the media without waiting for any verification or confirmation by the police. But somehow the same journalists decide to wait and become ‘responsible’ if a Hindu man or woman claims to be a victim of communal hatred."

"But things were happening on the other side too. OpIndia, a website aimed at providing a counter-narrative to the usual liberal narrative, was launched and started gaining traction in 2015. A Twitter handle named ‘True Indology’ became quite popular around 2016, as it exposed way too many wrong historical information that Hindus were fed by the secular-liberal ecosystem as indisputable facts. This handle got under the liberal skin, so much so that a national newspaper devoted an entire article trying to discredit it. They kept targeting it relentlessly and got the Twitter handle suspended. However, a different account could keep the mantle on the account is active on Facebook too."

"Why should anyone be interested in Pagal Patrakar’s story? Because this is not faking news, but real, and the story of an entire generation that questions shibboleths such as socialism, secularism and liberalism (defined in a certain way), which were unquestioningly accepted as axiomatic. It is this questioning that junked the former ecosystem and brought Narendra Modi and the BJP to power in 2014, and again in 2019. Though junked, the former empire still tries to strike back, and instead of disowning the winds of change, it would benefit from learning how and why Rahul Roushan became a Sanghi who has never been to a shakha."

"The first social media handle that had attracted my attention was that of Pagal Patrakar, that is, Faking News —for his understanding of politics. I can guarantee that most people missed the nuances of his narrative, but got a macro idea of where he was trying to lead them—a shakha. But this shakha wasn’t what one would want to believe. This was the shakha of modern info-war. The swayamsevaks were ‘mad’ social media activists. This was a modern war of identity, narrative and Bharat. And Rahul displayed enough pagalpan to be a successful patrakar in this info-war and battle of narrative building. In fact, I have learnt a lot from his political acumen during the many conversations and collaborations I had with him."

"From ‘making news’ as the creator of Faking News to becoming news by establishing OpIndia as one of the most celebrated online news portals, Rahul’s journey as a man of independent thought has come a full circle... Rahul’s life journey, to me this is a story of the coming of age of an average Indian who dared to break the shackles of a Nehruvian past and contribute to creating a New India."

"Sir Percival Griffiths, a member of the L.C.S., stressed the Muslim belief that “their interests must be regarded as completely separate from those of the Hindus, and that no fusion of the two communities was possible.” He adds, significantly enough, that however deplorable, “the statesman had to accept it.’”"

"Sir, we have all read in the newspapers the accounts of the terrible atrocities which are now going on in Malabar with poignant grief. I am representing the sentiments of the Indian nation when I say that the catastrophe which has taken place in Malabar is now pre-eminently occupying the attention of the general public and every news in connection therewith is waited by the general public with great interest and anxiety. It is unfortunate that the Government of the Madras Presidency is having a very anxious time. We have all read the harrowing accounts; we have also seen the fragmentary official and unofficial news and notices; we have read the Madras Government’s Communiqué on the subject; but the Council will agree with me when I say that the whole history of the outbreak has not been presented by the Madras Government in a connected narrative form, and we, therefore, await to-day a most exhaustive statement from the Government of India on the subject. We have read the Chapter of crimes committed in Malabar, of the destruction of public and private property, the looting of Government Treasuries and Sub-Treasuries, the defiling of Hindu temples and also of the forcible conversion of Hindus to Islam, with great horror and real grief."

"We want to know who is responsible for these acts and atrocities, and was it not within the power of Government to have avoided this catastrophe or minimised the severity of this catastrophe to a certain extent? It is true that the state of affairs in Malabar has been bad for the last six months. It is well known that the preachings of seditionists, that the poisonous doctrines which these seditionists and anarchists were daily pouring into that highly fanatical soil of Malabar was gaining ground. Government was aware of it. Government knew of the danger that was coming. And in this connection I will draw the attention of the House to a statement made by my friend the Honourable Sir William Vincent in February last in the Legislative Assembly. He said: ‘We are now faced in this country with the frequent prospects of disorders here and there. I myself think that we shall be very fortunate if we escape in the next six months without serious outbreaks of sporadic disorder in different places.’"

"I have made it perfectly clear that the Government anticipated danger, and I cannot therefore understand why Government did not take precautionary measures for the suppression of these atrocities in Malabar. As Government knew that the people of Malabar were collecting swords, spears, fire-arms and other instruments, it is difficult to understand why stringent measures of a precautionary character were not adopted in the right time. It might have averted a great deal of blood-shed, it might have averted the sanguinary battles that have taken place there and the loss of innocent lives that has unfortunately occurred. I, therefore, think that in this connection an explanation is due to the country from the Government, which cannot be altogether exonerated from a certain measure of responsibility in this matter."

"Further, Sir, it is perfectly clear that the Moplahs were prepared for the occasion and that there was a wide-spread organisation behind them; all these pitched battles with three and four thousand people which recently took place clearly demonstrate the existence of a well-conducted and nefarious organisation behind the back of these revolts. It is therefore necessary that the Government should make a complete statement on the point and place before the country any information that may exist on the subject, as I consider the time has now arrived when there is no longer any necessity for keeping the matter secret. I make bold to say in this connection, and I feel I echo the sentiments of all of us here, official and non-official Members, whether they be Europeans or Indians, that in any measures which Government may decide to adopt for the suppression of the revolts, for the promotion of order and the maintenance of peace, this Council will whole-heartedly give its support."

"Things are going from bad to worse; innocent lives are being lost; the country is almost in a state of consternation; riots are taking place not only in Malabar, but in all parts of India; every where there are seen forces of disruption and disorganisation; law-abiding citizens are not in a position to do their ordinary work; there is a state of havoc and intense anxiety."

"I think the time has arrived when the Government should adopt strict measures for the suppression of these riots and for the maintenance of peace and order. I would also like the Honourable the Home Member to enlighten the Council, as fully as possible, as to the origin and cause of these disturbances; a history of the genesis of these disturbances will be extremely valuable. I would also like the Honourable the Home Member to distinctly state the total number of casualties, both European and Indian."

"I would also like the Honourable the Home Member to assure this Council that Government have now taken precautionary measures immediately in the troubled parts of Madras, and within what period he expects peace and order to be fully restored in that troubled country. Government have promulgated the Martial Law Ordinance; a Martial Law Ordinance is always distasteful and unpalatable to the people. It can only be justified in case of absolute necessity, and I have no doubt that the Government was satisfied before the promulgation of the Ordinance in substituting martial law for the common law of the country."

"Further, I am very pleased, and the country has noticed with great satisfaction, that in the preparation of this Martial Law Ordinance the blunders that were committed at the time of the Punjab affair have been studiously avoided. The power and authority of the civil law has been to a certain extent maintained. Consultations by the military officers with the Civil Department have been rendered obligatory, and prior to the issue of notices and regulations, and the rules for summary trial of cases the necessity of following the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure has been indicated and enforced."

"... With Koran in one hand and the sword in the other these lawless bands marched through rich villages forcing conversion or death on the unwilling Hindu population of the locality. The houses of those Hindus and other non-Muslims have been broken into and properties, valued at several lakhs of rupees, have been looted and carried away. Inmates of houses were tortured. Men, women and children were murdered in cold blood. Age and sex mattered not to then. Hindu temples were destroyed; the images were broken; the temple jewels were carried away. The landed aristocracy of the place were subjected to a most cruel treatment. People in large numbers have been forced to leave off their belongings and flee for life to the town of Calicut where they have now taken refuge. The European community also have suffered much at the hands of the rioters, and it is miraculous that some of them have been able to make good their escape across the troubled area into Calicut. Such is the nature of the tragedy enacted in Malabar."

"Mr. Yakub Hasan, the President of the Madras Provincial Conference, who says that he knows these Moplahs rather intimately has some fine things to say of them. In his Presidential address at Tanjore, he says, ‘Once the blood of the Moplah is up, there is no knowing what it will lead to. Leaders of the community who have influence with the Moplahs, alone can pacify them.’ The blood of the Moplah is up, Sir, and we know to our cost what it has led to. While events are thus moving so rapidly in Malabar, it is a matter for very great regret that responsible Muslim leaders in different parts of the country have not yet come forward with their condemnation of this dastardly rising. It may be suggested that an immediate expression of their opinion will not carry weight with the Moplahs now that they are in the full swing of their fury. It is my humble opinion, however, that such an expression of their opinion will go far to pacify the rioters, to allay public feeling and restore peace which we all so much desire."

"It may not be out of place here to refer to the attempts made in recent years by the leaders of the two great communities, the Hindu and the Muhammadan, for the promotion of good feeling and for the establishment of a Hindu Moslem unity. That, Sir, is a consummation devoutly to be wished. I for one am a firm believer in the growth of such a feeling. But, for the unity to be harmonious, it must be spontaneous and when such a unity does establish itself, we shall have no more of these regrettable occurrences. I appeal to you, Sir, whether actions of this kind, such as the wholesale destruction of life, the looting of property, the desecration of sacred temples, the cold- blooded murders of men, women and children and the trampling under foot of the cherished sentiments of the Hindus, whether there are calculated to secure that unity which we have so much at heart. I am sure a decided ‘no’ will be the answer from the responsible leaders of the Muhammadan community. Having regard to the present outbreak it is imperative therefore that responsible Muslim leaders should come forward boldly to denounce and condemn the action of these unruly Moplahs, take the initiative in the matter of giving relief to the sufferers and thus pave the way for a real unity among the two great communities ..."

"... In conclusion, I appeal to the Honourable Members of this Council, more especially to the Muhammadan Members, to support in unambiguous and unequivocal terms any action seeking to give the innocent victims adequate relief for all the losses they have sustained through no fault of their own, irrespective of any consideration other than the extent of their losses and the demands of justice."

"‘Majoritarianism’ is a vacuous word that left liberals use all the time."

"I am proud to be part of the intellectual legacy of India’s contribution to global thinking across the arts, culture, science and philosophy. I am convinced … for incorporating social and humanistic concerns into the core value proposition of business and have sought to do so with tremendous support from my peers and colleagues at work and outside."

"English education has spoilt our character."

"We must strengthen our character, only then we can strengthen the country and make it free from corruption, poverty and illness."

"If your mother is robbed, will you sit quiet? How can I watch when Bharat Mata (Mother India) is looted?"

"Swami Ramdev basically belongs to the sanatan Vedic dharma. Swami Dayanand Saraswati’s book, ‘Satyarth Prakash’ filled his childhood with enlightenment after which he refused to study in the English system and chose to study in a Gurukul. Just like Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Ramdev also called for public welfare and a retreat towards the Indian saints’ knowledge-tradition and Vedic tradition. Swami Ramdev says, “My inspiration has been Vedas, Upnishads, Geeta and Yogdarshan.”"

"He has done a lot for Muslims. It will be remembered for long."

"I really believe that entrepreneurship is about being able to face failure, manage failure, and succeed after failing"

"Innovation and commerce are as powerful tools for creating social progress as they are for driving technological advancement"

"My big idea is to marry affordability and access to ensure that we leverage innovation to develop affordable, cutting-edge therapies for chronic diseases. I am on a mission to make a global impact by ensuring affordable access to healthcare"

"My life’s work has been focused on building a new model of innovation that adds the condition of affordability to ensure accessibility. I have successfully challenged the Western world’s existing model of pharmaceutical innovation, which leads to the creation of monopolistic markets for novel, life-saving drugs that deliver high margins at low volumes"

"I strongly believe that we can increase the number of women in leadership roles if we can plug their exit post-motherhood. In order to do this, we need to have a more enabling ecosystem that comprises the workplace, the home, and society at large. Good childcare infrastructure at the workplace and a strong family support system can help in a big way. As corporates, we can contribute by providing flexible human-resources policies that allow women to transition back to their jobs post-maternity in a smooth manner"

"We are seeing heightened awareness and discussions in India around facilitating women at work and addressing the issue of gender diversity. Recently we have seen the passage of the maternity bill in India, which has extended the maternity-leave period for women to 26 weeks. More recently, the Indian parliament is debating a proposal of awarding two days of paid menstrual leave every month to women at work in public and private sectors"

"I was totally unprepared for the gender bias that a young woman had to face for daring to start a business in the male-dominated society of India of the 1970s. But, actually, my experience did not make me change my belief that knowledge doesn’t discriminate on the basis of gender, and a woman can achieve anything if she puts her mind to it"

"I have always believed that successful businesses thrive on great human relationships, which are formed through collaborations and extend out into personal and professional networks. Very often, strong personal networks lead to robust professional relationships"

"I call myself an accidental entrepreneur"

"Even in the U.S. now, the adoption of biosimilars is becoming far greater because health care costs are spiraling out of control, and anything you can do to rein in costs is going to be very important"

"We have a huge opportunity to build a very large business"

"Just because we cannot afford human insulin, we are having to use animal insulin, so let me do something about it"

"That is what then gave me the raison d’être to focus on biopharmaceuticals"

"I believe we are in a humanitarian business, she says, and I think we are doing our bit for affordable access, which is what we want"

"The evolution and leadership transition started almost 15 years before it happened. We have had three CEO transitions and two CFO transitions in that period. Such changes prepare the board. When he transitioned out of the board, I had already been on it since 2013. I have been working at HCL since 2008. When he transitioned out of the company as chairperson, he completely left the organisation and the board. That was a mark of a mature organisation and of trust"

"Have a little faith in young daughters, they are not too bad"

"In 2020, pre covid, there was talent in the big cities. There were centres in the likes of Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Noida among others. The evolution post covid is that a lot of talent is now spread across the smaller cities. We are struggling to get people back at work as a lot of people want to work remotely for reasons like bigger cities are more expensive to stay in"

"HCL does a lot more on semiconductor design and works with organisations from all over the world. I was in Taiwan last year and I met with leaders of companies. Yes, it’s got the might but one of the leaders rightly pointed out that it took them 40 years to get there. So much of it had to do with the way skills evolved. We (India) have catching up to do, but technology will shrink that time of catching up. Investment in R&D and skills can’t be spearheaded by industries alone"

"With generative AI, it’s impacting the individual and helping in all walks of life. We are figuring out a way to evolve with it. The skills take a while to catch up. Our educational institutions also have a lot of catching up to do. Skills around data engineering, cyber security, and IoT (the Internet of Things) will have to evolve. Educational institutions have to start this if India has to stay ahead"

"Such moments have been part of our evolution. Back in the 70s when the calculator came, everybody was scared and thought that children didn’t need to learn math. Then, we evolved the system of using them (along with students learning math). A few generations later came the search engine. Everybody was looking at information online and there was a certain evolution that took place there too. Then came the iPod and after that shortly came the iPhones and everything was available at fingertips. It evolved and helped consumers"

"There will be some jobs that will go through a certain evolution, in the world of generative AI. However, there will be new jobs that will be created. If some companies are reducing headcount, it’s perhaps for a certain segment of jobs, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that opportunities will reduce. I think it will grow"

"India is the technology talent hub of the world. It also helps global companies achieve diversity goals as the country produces the highest STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) talent in the world when it comes to females. Unfortunately, if you look at the data, it’s declining, but it’s still the largest number in the world"

"Within the top 200 leaders of our company—out of 120,000 employees—we don’t have a single woman leader"

"So we asked ourselves, if we want a female CEO in a decade, what steps do we need to take to get there"

"These women get married, have a family—it’s why they leave"

"We have to plug the gap and bring them back without treating it as lost time"

"The steppingstone for building a great leader is getting a great education"

"The work we do is driven by our conviction to drive meaningful transformation by harnessing the power of inclusive education"

"We believe in depth, not breadth—at any given time, we’re only touching maybe 10,000 students. A lot of people say that we could be touching so many more lives, but you can’t touch that many lives if you’re trying to make a leader"

"These children have been phenomenal in the amount that they’ve developed. And hopefully in my lifetime, one of the VidyaGyan students will be the prime minister of India – that would be exciting"

"I can’t say to you, “I live in a country of 1 billion and I’m touching 2 million or 3 million lives.” We don’t have fancy numbers to show, but I think we concentrate on depth of philanthropic impact and not breadth"

"So government should do what they do, and philanthropists should continue to act independently, too, but there are also many opportunities for them to work together through public-private partnerships"

"You must not expect positive differentiation, she says. You should be ready to do what men do, if you are competing for the same position. If the job requires 15-20 days' travel a month, you should be ready"

"Vasudeva is a thorough professional and ambitious executive"

"With a larger pool of women executives, you will see more women on boards of not only energy companies but across the public sector"

"Women work in refineries, marketing offices, and on rigs"

"HPCL's refinery is hardly 80 km from the border at Bhatinda, Punjab, and another one is coming up in Barmer, but the decision would have to be taken at the diplomatic level"

"There are women on the board of Engineers India and Oil India and as I said earlier, as long as the women in the industry give their best as professionals, they will get due recognition"

"I have certainly not felt it. But we cannot declare victory and women should continue to remain focused"

"In the last few years, I have taken the IBM story to many industries beyond telecom - banking, financial services and insurance, industrial and retail segments"

"Before I came here, I thought of myself as a telecom person - I spent 20 years in that industry. For the first time, I have started working with companies in manufacturing and industries I have not worked with before"

"It has defined my IBM career. It helped me lay a foundation - you respect the industry of your client and sometimes, the client is your best teacher"

"Apart from a job in a department store, IBM is my only job. It was the only place where I wrote a professional resume and was interviewed"

"IBM wanted somebody with an appreciation for the market, for what it needed from a local perspective. I brought my experience with IBM, in global and local roles. Plus, they had me here for the last four years learning the market and running parts of the business"

"I don't have these night-and-day moments"

"I don't have these night-and-day moments, she says. My first decade was about appreciation for an industry and a client. The second decade was about bringing value, about building organizational capability. The third decade is about leadership in different cultures and environments"

"Now, there is no looking back, because I have realised that I can be challenged and be very happy in any job"

"We have taken on 23,000 people, in addition to the 62,000 that we had. This has taken our combined strength to 85,000"

"I am leading the integration work in India"

"The global M&A team drove the deal. I was involved as it had a big impact on India"

"By January, we will start operating as a single company"

"But that's a very small part of what we do in India"

"We do more work for global clients out of India"

"There was no point in getting into an argument with this opinionated, old-fashioned lady. But women feel a lot of such pressures. You can’t be just strong, you have to be super-strong and be extremely determined to overcome these challenges"

"May be because I never really faced them. I come from an environment where you are treated as an individual — you do what you have to do"

"So I have no nice story to tell you about how I overcame anything"

"But then I realized there was some merit in talking to women, people who are thinking of leaving for family and such reasons, and tell them it was high time they stood up for themselves"

"But I have seen women in our offices in Bangalore and Chennai also feel the family pressure"

"So I worked from home till one day before my daughter was born. And three weeks after she was born I was back at work, in the office. I had worked two months from home and I was going nuts. I had to see my colleagues. I was sick of being in conference calls and on email"

"My daughter may be the greatest looking thing on Earth, but you can’t spend 18 hours a day looking at her. It’s also social conditioning that makes you feel that the baby needs you. I figured out that the baby doesn’t even need you. They just need someone to wash them and take care of them"

"There is no glass ceiling. It is a myth. If it exists, it is in your head. I have worked in the IT industry for the last 27 years, and I know it doesn’t exist. Our growth rates are so high, our industry is so hungry for talent, why would there be any discrimination? Get over this.”“Wipe out any guilt today. Even if you have an iota of it, you will hesitate"

"I don’t like this job at hand right now, let me go somewhere else I am not sure this is always the right way to look at things. You have to take a much broader view of your career. I am not saying that people should not change jobs, you can and you should. But take a much broader view of your career, and focus on the big picture"

"I don’t care about the environment, but I will make it work"

"Go get the job done, who cares whether you come to office at 7 or you don’t come to office at all"

"And finally, one has to have fire in the belly and a strong desire to succeed – without that you don’t get anywhere"

"As a professional, I have followed my passions even outside my core area of work"

"During my stint in the corporate world, I have always felt men are better than women at marketing themselves. Thats why women need that little extra support"

"Many women directors tell me it hasn't been easy but they are enjoying it. And in many instances, men have been very encouraging - which is a good sign"

"The rule says a 'minimum of one woman' director but I think the ideal number will be two. This will help women have a stronger voice on the board"

"It's taken for granted that the son will inherit the business but now the daughter in the family will also get a chance to prove her mettle. And this may have a positive impact on succession planning in the future"

"Women feel more guilt as compared to men while taking that decision. At the core of it all is guilt. Women need more support systems"

"I don’t think that has gone away completely because we still represent other women, not just ourselves as individuals in our careers as we go. So, that pressure is something one just gets used to living with. And that scrutiny never ends, so when you fall, you are noticed much more than when you succeed. Though fortunately, that too gets noticed"

"I have had as many good male bosses as bad ones, and it will always be the case that there will be individuals who in their own right are fabulous human beings and great leaders; and individuals who may be smart but are not such good leaders, whether men or women. And I think we have to just take the good and the bad as it goes. You cannot typecast men and women leaders once you’re at that level"

"Having good advisors and mentors to turn to, who are senior and more experienced helped at the beginning. And then I learnt that I don’t have to have all the answers. I made it a point to assemble the best teams, to seek out information, build networks, and look outside. That curiosity and willingness to learn were crucial – it brought people in versus keeping them out. And then things built from there. and standing in for me as we both navigated our careers. My bond with my sister, our kids – these are the most precious gifts"

"What’s better now is that there are more women in the workforce. And as more women go through their careers, make their voices heard, things begin to change. Women providing inputs and having these conversations do drive change. There are also more women in leadership roles – that also helps bring additional perspective to the larger organization"

"What helped was a strong sense of ownership and intuition. I had read somewhere that intuition is just hundreds of experiences blended; and that gave me confidence to trust my gut. I had been in tough situations before, and I leaned on that experience"

"What also helped was the trusted network of resources – the experts and advisors – I could access, who guided and helped me navigate the situation. They took my calls and they stepped in when we needed them"

"We need to be passionate and driven to achieve any goal we choose"

"We need to push the limits of achievement and better our performance all the time. I think we should be ‘engaged’ in the profession of our choice rather than just ‘work hard’ in our chosen work area. We need to literally set ourselves on fire with our objectives"

"That is exactly what power means to me - getting things done"

"When I get whatever I've set my heart on - whether it is a mandate we must win or a person I wish to hire"

"Win. Win. Win. I have a huge passion to win. I feel we tend to make excuses because we haven’t set our mind to win. Whatever it is that you do in life, you need to be in the top three"

"I am a people person. So whenever I engage, whether it’s a client or my own team, for me it’s not just about the work or task at hand. It is about knowing the person and what drives him"

"The disinvestment boom is not on her front burner. I have a clear focus on the bottom line"

"I am utterly disappointed, hurt and shocked by the decision. I have not been given a copy of the report. I reiterate that none of the credit decisions at the bank are unilateral. ICICI is an institution with established robust processes and systems which involve committee based collective decision making with several professionals of high calibre participating in the decision making"

"I have served at ICICI for the last 34 years with all my dedication and hard work. I have never shied away from taking tough decisions whenever required to be taken in the best interest of the organisation. This decision from the bank has caused me immense hurt and pain"

"I have pursued my career as an independent professional with utmost honesty, dignity and integrity. I continue to have faith and belief in my conduct as a professional and I am certain that truth will ultimately prevail"

"Aarti, there is no limit to what a determined mind can achieve, but in achieving your goal, don't compromise on the values of fair play and honesty"

"Don't cut corners or compromise to achieve your dreams. Remember to be sensitive to the feelings of people around you. And remember, if you don't allow stress to overtake you, it will never become an issue in your life"

"I believe in fate but I also believe that hard work and diligence plays a very important role in our lives. In a larger sense, we all write our own destiny. Take destiny in your own hands, dream of what you want to achieve, and write it in your own way. As you go ahead in life, I want you to climb the path to success one step at a time. Aim for the sky, but move slowly, enjoying every step along the way. It is all those little steps that make the journey complete"

"As you go forward, you will sometimes have to take difficult decisions, decisions that others might scorn at. But you must have the courage to stand up for what you believe in. Make sure you have that conviction to do what you know is right, and once you have it, don't let skeptics distract you from your path"

"Remember that good times and bad times will be part of your life equally, and you have to learn to handle both with equanimity. Make the most of life's opportunities and learn from every opportunity, and challenge that life brings along"

"Women are very strong but while a lot of women join the organisation, it’s also equally important for them not to give up and continue through that biggest life stage point where they start their families"

"I think organisations are doing a lot. First of all, what most organisations now in India are doing is encouraging more and more women to join the organisation. Secondly, they are creating a very merit-oriented environment which means that people are confident. Women are confident that if they put in the hard work and they are capable enough, they will get their rightful move in the organisation"

"For the specific life stage needs, at least what the ICICI has done is that we have created a whole programme where women can actually work from home over a longer period and not lose out on their career progression. We have also started this thing where if women who have children up to 3 years of age, travel overnight for work, we pay for the accompanying child and the accompanying caretaker. I think these are the things that need to be done to really meet that specific life stage need"

"India still fares much better than many countries in the world. It's a wide spectrum - there isn't another country where you have 100 million families impacted by the self-help groups of which 85% are women"

"If people ask me what special policies we have to encourage women, we actually don't have any special policies for women. The only special thing we do is to create that environment where women feel confident that it is on the basis of their merit that they will rise"

"I think in order to empower our women we need 3Es. Encourage them, educate them and empower them economically. What I mean by this is first of all, in society, we have to inspire all our girls and women to aspire to do well. Aspire to dream big and aspire to back it up with hard work. Secondly, we must ensure education for all women because it is normally believed when you educate a man, you educate a person but when you educate a woman, you educate the entire generation"

"Therefore ensuring education for all women is very important. The third one is that we have to empower them economically, by providing them the right skills, by providing them access to jobs, by providing them access to markets - basically all opportunities and requisites to enable them to participate in the economic growth"

"I'm still looking at potential acquisition targets around the globe."

"You're going to see more M&A activity within the VFX and animation community; I think you're going to see companies bulk up."

"Markets are like physics."

"It's going to be interesting [to see] if there's a land grab on services that they want to be a part of."