India

"It is not that India was never an independent country. The point is that she once lost the independence she had. Will she lose it a second time? It is this thought which makes me most anxious for the future. What perturbs me greatly is the fact that not only India has once before lost her independence, but she lost it by the infidelity and treachery of some of her own people. ... Will history repeat itself? It is this thought which fills me with anxiety. This anxiety is deepened by the realization of the fact that in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost forever. This eventuality we must all resolutely guard against. We must be determined to defend our independence with the last drop of our blood."

"India of the ages is not dead nor has She spoken her last creative word; She lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an Anglicized oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorial Shakti recovering Her deepest self, lifting Her head higher toward the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma."

"For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shaktis of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people …"

"India is the guru of the nations, the physician of the human soul in its profounder maladies; she is destined once more to remould the life of the world and restore the peace of the human spirit. But Swaraj is the necessary condition of her work and before she can do the work , she must fulfil the condition."

"The 'nation idea' India never had. By that I mean the political idea of the nation. It is a modern growth. But we had in India the cultural and spiritual idea of the nation."

"India is the only country which has known God and if anyone wants to know God he must know India."

"She who bears plants endowed with many varied powers, may Prithivī for us spread wide and favour us. In whom the sea, and Sindhu, and the waters, in whom our food and corn-lands had their being."

"[Hindustan] is a wonderful country. Compared with our countries it is a different world; its mountains, rivers, jungles and deserts, its towns, its cultivated lands, its animals and plants, its peoples and their tongues, its rains, and its winds, are all different. ...Once the water of Sind is crossed, everything is in the Hindustan way, land, water, tree, rock, people and horde, opinion and custom."

"The age in which true history appeared in India was one of great intellectual and spiritual ferment. Mystics and sophists of all kinds roamed through the Ganga Valley, all advocating some form of mental discipline and asceticism as a means to salvation; but the age of the Buddha, when many of the best minds were abandoning their homes and professions for a life of asceticism, was also a time of advance in commerce and politics. It produced not only philosophers and ascetics, but also merchant princes and men of action."

"In the tract of land known as Bhārata-varṣa, as in Ilāvṛta-varṣa, there are many mountains and rivers. ... The inhabitants of Bhārata-varṣa are purified because they always remember these rivers."

"The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs."

"India is the mother of religion. In her are combined science and religion in perfect harmony, and that is the Hindu religion, and it is India that shall be again the spiritual mother of the world."

"That is the India of which I have to speak — the India which, as I said, is to me the Holy Land. For those who, though born for this life in a Western land and clad in a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their true mother — they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past, must dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination ; for they are bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past ; and with her, too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a future which they know they will share with her who is their true mother in the soul-life."

"It is maintained that INDIA (not in its present limits, but including its ancient boundaries) is the only country in the world which still has among her sons adepts, who have the knowledge of all the seven sub-systems and the key to the entire system."

"Its water is dark and dirty. Its fruit is bitter and poisonous. Its land is stony and its earth is salt. A small army will soon be annihilated there, and a large one will soon die of hunger."

"The area extending from the Himalayas in the north to the sea and a thousand yojanas wide from east to west is the area of operation of the King-Emperor."

"Mother, I bow to thee! Rich with thy hurrying streams, Bright with thy orchard gleams, Cool with the winds of delight, Dark fields waving, Mother of might, Mother free."

"India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator."

"Powerful Empires existed and flourished here (in India) while Englishmen were still wandering, painted, in the woods, and while the British Colonies were still a wilderness and a jungle. India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the universe."

"India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all."

"It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to us such questionable gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all, our numerals and our decimal system. But these are not the essence of her spirit; they are trifles compared to what we may learn from her in the future. ... Perhaps, in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love for all living things."

"In India everything has been god, everything is god or will be god. The gods change, they evolve, they are born and die, they may or may not leave children, they tighten or loosen their grip on the imagination of men and on the walls of the rocks. What does not die, in India, is faith—the immense faith, frenzied and confused under a thousand names; it changes its form ceaselessly, but always remains the same immeasurable power that urges the masses to action."

"The English have taught us that we were not one nation before and that it will require centuries before we become one nation. This is without foundation. We were one nation before they came to India. One thought inspired us. Our mode of life was the same. It was because we were one nation that they were able to establish one kingdom. Subsequently they divided us."

"India is an example of a country where there's plenty of things that are difficult there -- the health, education, nutrition is improving and they are stable enough and generating their own government revenue enough that it's very likely that 20 years from now people will be dramatically better off and it's kind of a laboratory to try things that then when you prove them out in India, you can take to other places."

"This vast land... had been a single indivisible whole since times immemorial. Bharatavarsha had been termed by the ancients as the cradle of varnãšrama-dharma, witness to the wheel of the caturyugas, and the kshetra for chakravãrtya, spiritual as well as political. This historical memory and cultural tradition was alive as late as the imperial Guptas. Kalidasa had clothed it in immortal poetry in his far-famed Raghuvamša."

"India indeed has a preciousness which a materialistic age is in danger of missing. Some day the fragrance of her thought will win the hearts of men. This grim chase after our own tails, which marks the present age, cannot continue forever. The future contains a new human urge towards the real beauty and holiness of life. When it comes India will be searched by loving eyes and defended by knightly hands."

"You have engulfed Hindustan in dread... Oh Lord, these dogs have destroyed this diamond-like Hindustan, (so great is their terror that) no one asks after those who have been killed, and yet You do not pay heed."

"India is not only a country and something geographical, but the home and the youth of the soul, the everywhere and nowhere, the oneness of all times."

"India, as everyone knows, is divided equally between jungle, tigers, cobras, cholera, and sepoys"

"As for India, which is now emerging as the major power in South Asia, its foreign policy is in many ways the last vestige of the heyday of European imperialism, leavened by the traditions of an ancient culture. Before the arrival of the British, the subcontinent had not been ruled as a single political unit for millennia. British colonization was accomplished with small military forces because, at first, the local population saw these as the replacement of one set of conquerors by another. But after it established unified rule, the British Empire was undermined by the very values of popular government and cultural nationalism it had imported into India. Yet, as a nation-state, India is a newcomer. Absorbed by the struggle to feed its vast population, India dabbled in the Nonaligned movement during the Cold War. But it has yet to assume a role commensurate with its size on the international political stage."

"Happy Hindustan, the splendour of Religion. where the Law finds perfect honour and security... The whole country, by means of the sword of our holy warriors, has become like a forest denuded of its thorns by fire. The land has been saturated with the water of the sword, and the vapours of infidelity have been dispersed. The strong men of Hind have been trodden under foot, and all are ready to pay tribute. ... Had not the law [of Imam Hanifa] granted exemption from death by the payment of poll-tax, the very name of hind, root and branch, would have been extinguished."

"India is a land of warm affections and abiding loyalities."

"You'd have to be brain dead to live in India and not be affected by Hinduism. It's not like Christianity in America, where you feel it only on Sunday mornings … if you go to church at all. Hinduism is an on-going daily procedure. You live it, you breathe it. … Hinduism has a playful aspect which I've not experienced in any other religion. Its not so righteous or sober as is Christianity, nor is it puritanical. That's one of the reasons I enjoy India. I wake up in the morning, and I'm very content."

"India and Hinduism are organically related as body and soul."

"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."

"That land where the black antelope naturally roams, one must know to be fit for the performance of sacrifices; (the tract) different from that (is) the country of the Mlekkhas."

"If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India."

"The land was sacred, but it wasn’t political history that made it so. Religious myths touched every part of the land... Story within story, fable within fable: that was what people saw and felt in their bones. Those were the myths, about gods and the heroes of the epics, that gave antiquity and wonder to the earth people lived on."

"The Messenger of Allah said: 'There are two groups of my Ummah whom Allah will free from the Fire: The group that invades India (taghzoo al-hind), and the group that will be with 'Isa bin Maryam, peace be upon him.'"

"Brought upon text books written by foreigners whose one object would seem to have been to prove that there was no such thing as India, we had each to ‘discover’ India for ourselves."

"Like every old civilisation still represented on this globe, India has been, and is, increasingly, in spite of appearances, returning to its original sources... It is from the depths of that old civilisation that India is most likely to draw the strength needed to adapt itself to the modern world."

"If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India....For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay."

"The greatest human ideal is the great cause of bringing together the thoughts of Europe and Asia; the great soul of India will topple our world."

"Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl."

"The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creator's hand."

"Indeed how many were the seers and sages, poets and prophets - right from the Vedic age upto the modern times - who had fostered in the nation's breast the integrated and whole picture of Bharat as the Divine Mother. Bharat, in their eyes, was not a mere clod of clay. It was verily the Matrubhoomi, the Punyabhoomi, the Dharmabhoomi, the Devabhoomi, the Karmabhoomi - all sublimated into one single majestic figure of Bharat Mata. To Bankimchandra, She appeared as the triple manifestation of Saraswati, Lakshmi and Durga. Rabindranath Tagore visualised Her as Devi bhuvana-mana-mohini - the divine enchantress of the world. To Swami Vivekananda, She was the Mother of all the thirty-three crores of gods and goddesses - whose worship would gratify all those myriad deities. Guruji Golwalkar visualised Her as Trinity of Mata - the loving mother, Pita - the protecting father, and Guru - the elevating spiritual guide. The unity of Bharat is so basic to its nature, so sublime in its depths - in fact, an inseparable aspect of its national soul."

"Everything, absolutely everything, is of Indian origin."

"They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo — an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as ‘India’, just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British; no such thing as Hinduism, just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose a uniformity — that has been their stance."

"India beyond all doubt possesses a deep underlying fundamental unity, far more profound than that produced either by geographical isolation or by political suzerainty. That unity transcends the innumerable diversities of blood, colour, language, dress, manners, and sect... The most essentially fundamental Indian unity rests upon the fact that the diverse peoples of India have developed a peculiar type of culture or civilization utterly different from any other type in the world."

"Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people, dispenser of India's destiny. Thy name rouses the hearts of the Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat and Maratha. of the Dravida, Orissa and Bengal. It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas, mingles in the music of the Yamuna and Ganges and is chanted by the waves of the Indian Sea. They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise. The saving of all people waits in thy hand, thou dispenser of India's destiny. Victory, Victory, Victory to thee."

"This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will."

"Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential incidents — in India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they annihilate hundreds; in the other, millions. India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire. With her everything is on a giant scale — even her poverty; no other country can show anything to compare with it. And she has been used to wealth on so vast a scale that she has to shorten to single words the expressions describing great sums."

"India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soil. It would seem as if she should have kept the lead, and should be to-day not the meek dependent of an alien master, but mistress of the world, and delivering law and command to every tribe and nation in it. But, in truth, there was never any possibility of such supremacy for her."

"So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked. Always, when you think you have come to the end of her tremendous specialties and have finished hanging tags upon her as the Land of the Thug, the Land of the Plague, the Land of Famine, the Land of Giant Illusions, the Land of Stupendous Mountains, and so forth, another specialty crops up and another tag is required. I have been overlooking the fact that India is by an unapproachable supremacy — the Land of Murderous Wild Creatures. Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the tags and generalize her with one all-comprehensive name, as the Land of Wonders."

"The country north of the sea and south of the Himalayas Is Bharata and her children are Bharati. A thousand yojanas from north to south, It has kiratas in the east and yavanas in the west."

"This is the ancient land where wisdom made its home before it went into any other country, the same India whose influx of spirituality is represented, as it were, on the material plane, by rolling rivers like oceans, where the eternal Himalayas, rising tier above tier with their snowcaps, look as it were into the very mysteries of heaven. Here is the same India whose soil has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived. Here first sprang up inquiries into the nature of man and into the internal world. Here first arose the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the existence of a supervising God, an immanent God in nature and in man, and here the highest ideals of religion and philosophy have attained their culminating points. This is the land from whence, like the tidal waves, spirituality and philosophy have again and again rushed out and deluged the world, and this is the land from whence once more such tides must proceed in order to bring life and vigour into the decaying races of mankind. It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries, of hundreds of foreign invasions of hundreds of upheavals of manners and customs. It is the same land which stands firmer than any rock in the world, with its undying vigour, indestructible life. Its life is of the same nature as the soul, without beginning and without end, immortal; and we are the children of such a country."

"I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc."

"The history of India for many centuries had been happier, less fierce, and more dreamlike than any other history. In these favorable conditions, they built a character meditative and peaceful and a nation of philosophers such as could have existed except nowhere in India."

"We will call the country In-tu. In Chinese this name signifies the Moon. The moon has many names, of which this is one. For as it is said that all living things ceaselessly revolve in the wheel (of transmigration) through the long night of ignorance, without a guiding star, their case is like (the world), the sun gone down; as then the torch affords its connecting light, though there be the shining of the stars, how different from the bright (cool) moon; just so the bright connected light of holy men and sages, guiding the world as the shining of the moon, have made this country eminent, and so it is called In-tu."

"In 1823, A. D. Campbell, a British officer stationed in South India, wrote about the direct impact of these economic policies on the state of education: ‘I am sorry to state that this is ascribable to the gradual but general impoverishment of the country. The means of the manufacturing classes have been, of late years greatly diminished, by the introduction of our own European manufactures, in lieu of the Indian cotton fabrics. ... the transfer of the capital of the country ... and daily draining it from the land, has likewise tended to this effect ... the greater part of the middling and lower classes of the people are now unable to defray the expenses incident upon the education of their offspring, while their necessities require the assistance of their children as soon as their tender limbs are capable of the smallest labour.’ … in many villages where formerly there were schools, there are now none’; […] ‘learning, though it may proudly decline to sell its stores, had never flourished in any country except under the encouragement of the ruling power, and the countenance andsupport once given to science in this part of India has long been withheld.’ […] ‘of the 533 institutions for education now existing in this district, I am ashamed to say not one now derives any support from the State’ […] ‘there is no doubt, that in former times, especially under the Hindoo Governments very large grants, both in money and in land, were issued for the support of learning."

"The Sultans drew from the people every rupee of tribute that could be exacted by the ancient art of taxation, as well as by straightforward robbery; but they stayed in India, spent their spoils in India, and thereby turned them back into India’s economic life. Nevertheless, their terrorism and exploitation advanced that weakening of Hindu physique and morale which had been begun by an exhausting climate, an inadequate diet, political disunity, and pessimistic religions. The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up “rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus, and for depriving them of that wealth and property which fosters disaffection and rebellion.”80 Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. “No Hindu,” says a Moslem historian, “could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver . . . or of any superfluity was to be seen. . . . Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment.” When one of his own advisers protested against this policy, Alau-d-din answered: “Oh, Doctor, thou art a learned man, but thou hast no experience; I am an unlettered man, but I have a great deal. Be assured, then, that the Hindus will never become submissive and obedient till they are reduced to poverty. I have therefore given orders that just sufficient shall be left to them from year to year of corn, milk and curds, but that they shall not be allowed to accumulate hoards and property.”"

"Internal trade flourished; every roadside was—and is—a bazaar. The foreign trade of India is as old as her history;22 objects found in Sumeria and Egypt indicate a traffic between these countries and India as far back as 3000 B.C.23 Commerce between India and Babylon by the Persian Gulf flourished from 700 to 480 B.C.; and perhaps the “ivory, apes and peacocks” of Solomon came by the same route from the same source. India’s ships sailed the sea to Burma and China in Chandragupta’s days; and Greek merchants, called Yavana (Ionians) by the Hindus, thronged the markets of Dravidian India in the centuries before and after the birth of Christ.24 Rome, in her epicurean days, depended upon India for spices, perfumes and unguents, and paid great prices for Indian silks, brocades, muslins and cloth of gold; Pliny condemned the extravagance which sent $5,000,000 yearly from Rome to India for such luxuries. Indian cheetahs, tigers and elephants assisted in the gladiatorial games and sacrificial rites of the Colosseum.25 The Parthian wars were fought by Rome largely to keep open the trade route to India. In the seventh century the Arabs captured Persia and Egypt, and thereafter trade between Europe and Asia passed through Moslem hands; hence the Crusades, and Columbus."

"“The Indians,” says Megasthenes, “neither put out money at usury” (interest), “nor know how to borrow. It is contrary to established usage for an Indian either to do or to suffer wrong; and therefore they neither make contracts nor require securities.”"

"The wealth of the country reached its two peaks under Chandragupta Maurya and Shah Jehan. The riches of India under the Gupta kings became a proverb throughout the world. Yuan Chwang pictured an Indian city as beautified with gardens and pools, and adorned with institutes of letters and arts; “the inhabitants were well off, and there were families with great wealth; fruit and flowers were abundant. . . . The people had a refined appearance, and dressed in glossy silk attire; they were . . . clear and suggestive in discourse; they were equally divided between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.”41 “The Hindu kingdoms overthrown by the Moslems,” says Elphinstone, “were so wealthy that the historians tire of telling of the immense loot of jewels and coin captured by the invaders.”42 Nicolo Conti described the banks of the Ganges (ca. 1420) as lined with one prosperous city after another, each well designed, rich in gardens and orchards, silver and gold, commerce and industry.43 Shah Jehan’s treasury was so full that he kept two underground strong rooms, each of some 150,000 cubic feet capacity, almost filled with silver and gold.44 “Contemporary testimonies,” says Vincent Smith, “permit of no doubt that the urban population of the more important cities was well to do.”45 Travelers described Agra and Fathpur-Sikri as each greater and richer than London.46 Anquetil-Duperron, journeying through the Mahratta districts in 1760, found himself “in the midst of the simplicity and happiness of the Golden Age. . . . The people were cheerful, vigorous, and in high health.”47 Clive, visiting Murshidabad in 1759, reckoned that ancient capital of Bengal as equal in extent, population and wealth to the London of his time, with palaces far greater than those of Europe, and men richer than any individual in London.48 India, said Clive, was “a country of inexhaustible riches.”49 Tried by Parliament for helping himself too readily to this wealth, Clive excused himself ingeniously: he described the riches that he had found about him in India—opulent cities ready to offer him any bribe to escape indiscriminate plunder, bankers throwing open to his grasp vaults piled high with jewels and gold; and he concluded: “At this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.”50"

"Indians of old were keenly alive to the expansion of dominions, acquisition of wealth, and the development of trade, industry and commerce. The material prosperity they gained in these various ways was reflected in the luxury and elegance that characterized the society... The adventurous spirit of the Indians carried them even as far as the North Sea, while their caravans traveled from one end of Asia to the other."

"India survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerors’ opulence."

"There was no middle state. A man must be of the highest rank or live miserably."

"Most towns in Hindustan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched material; that there is no city or town (that) does not bear evident marks of approaching decay. (...) In eastern countries, the weak and the injured are without any refuge whatever; and the only law that decides all controversies is the cane and the caprice of a governor."

"As the ground is seldom tilled otherwise than by compulsion… the whole country is badly cultivated, and a great part rendered unproductive… The peasant cannot avoid asking himself this question: Why should I toil for a tyrant who may come tomorrow and lay his rapacious hands upon all I possess and value… without leaving me the means (even) to drag my own miserable existence? - The Timariots (Timurids), Governors and Revenue contractors, on their part reason in this manner: Why should the neglected state of this land create uneasiness in our minds, and why should we expend our own money and time to render it fruitful? We may be deprived of it in a single moment… Let us draw from the soil all the money we can, though the peasant should starve or abscond…"

"[The Mughals maintained] “a large army for the purpose of keeping people in subjection… No adequate idea can be conveyed of the sufferings of the people. The cudgel and the whip compel them to incessant labour… their revolt or their flight is only prevented by the presence of a military force.”"

"No artisan can be expected to give his mind to his calling in the midst of a people who are either wretchedly poor, or who, if rich, assume an appearance of poverty, and who regard not the beauty and excellence but the cheapness of an article; a people whose grandeess pay for a work of art considerably under its value and according to their own caprice… For it should not be inferred that the workman is held in esteem, or arrives at a stage of independence. Nothing but sheer necessity or blows from a cudgel keeps him employed; he never can become rich, and he feels it no trifling matter if he have the means of satisfying the cravings of hunger and of covering his body with the coarsest garment. If money be gained it does not in any measure go into his pocket, but only serves to increase the wealth of the merchant."

"…grandees pay for a work of art considerably under its value, and according to their own caprice. … When an Omrah or Mansabdar requires the services of an artisan, he sends to the bazar for him, employing force, if necessary, to make the poor man work; and after the task is finished, the unfeeling lord pays, not according to the value- of the labour, but agreeably to his own standard of fair remuneration; the artisan having reason to congratulate himself if the Korrah has not been given in part payment."

"Staggering numbers also died as collateral damage of the deliberate impoverishment by Sultans like Alauddin Khilji and Jahangir. As Braudel put it: "The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerors' opulence.""

"The conclusion that the decay noticed in the early 19th century and more so in subsequent decades originated with European supremacy in India, therefore, seems inescapable. The 1769-70 famine in Bengal (when, according to British record, one-third of the population actually perished), may be taken as a mere forerunner of what was to come. (...) During the latter part of the 19th century, impressions of decay, decline and deprivation began to agitate the mind of the Indian people. Such impressions no doubt resulted from concrete personal, parental and social experience of what had gone before. They were, perhaps, somewhat exaggerated at times. By 1900, it had become general Indian belief that the country had been decimated by British rule in all possible ways; that not only had it become impoverished, but it had been degraded to the furthest possible extent; that the people of India had been cheated of most of what they had; that their customs and manners were ridiculed, and that the infrastructure of their society mostly eroded. One of the statements which thus came up was that the ignorance and illiteracy in India was caused by British rule; and, conversely, that at the beginning of British political dominance, India had had extensive education, learning and literacy. By 1930, much had been written on this point in the same manner as had been written on the deliberate destruction of Indian crafts and industry, and the impoverishment of the Indian countryside."

"The cities look attractive from a distance... Rich men have gardens... The common people live in huts and hovels."

"[In the seventeenth century John De Laet (1631) summarised the information he had collected from English, Dutch and Portuguese sources regarding the Mughal empire as a whole.] “The condition of the common people in these regions (south and west) is exceedingly miserable; wages are low; workmen get only one regular meal a day, the houses are wretched and practically unfurnished, and people have not got sufficient covering to keep warm in winter.”"

"The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything they want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; Hindoo, Patan, Mogul, Mahratta, Sik, English are all masters in turn; but the village communities remain the same... If a country remains for a series of years the scene of continued pillage and massacre, so that villages cannot be inhabited, the scattered villagers nevertheless return whenever the power of peaceable possession revives. A generation may pass away, but the succeeding generation will return. The sons will take the place of their fathers; the same site for the village, the same position for the houses, the same lands, will be occupied by the descendants of those who were driven out when the village was depopulated..."

"When any hungry wretch takes it into his head to ruin the kingdom, he goes to the king and says to him: 'Sire; if your majesty will give me the permission to raise money and a certain number of armed men, I will pay so many millions. The king then asks how it is intended to raise the money. It is by nothing else than the seizure of everybody in the kingdom, men and women, and by dint of torture compelling them to pay what is demanded. Such financiers are hateful and avaricious men. The king generally consents to their unjust proposals, as he thereby satisfies his own greed; he accords the asked-for permission, and demands security bonds."

"[When Aurangzeb died] “he left behind him the fields of these provinces (Deccan) devoid of trees and bare of crops, their places being taken by the bones of men and beasts.”"

"The common people (live in) poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe… their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking…"

"Peons or servants are exceedingly numerous in this country... for every one-be he mounted soldier, merchant or king’s official-keeps as many as his position and circumstances permit. Outside the house, they serve for display, running continually before their master’s horse; inside, they do the work of the house, each knowing his duty..."

"The utter subjection and poverty of the common people-poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe. ... There are three classes of people who are indeed nominally free, but whose status differs very little from voluntary slavery-workmen, peons or servants and shopkeepers. For the workmen there are two scourges, the first of which is low wages. Goldsmiths, painters (of cloth or chintz), embroiderers, carpet makers, cotton or silk weavers, black-smiths, copper-smiths, tailors, masons, builders, stone-cutters, a hundred crafts in all-any of these working from morning to night can earn only 5 or 6 tackas (tankahs), that is 4 or 5 strivers in wages. The second (scourge) is (the oppression of) the Governor, the nobles, the Diwan, the Kotwal, the Bakshi, and other royal officers. If any of these wants a workman, the man is not asked if he is willing to come, but is seized in the house or in the street, well beaten if he should dare to raise any objection, and in the evening paid half his wages, or nothing at all. From these facts the nature of their food can be easily inferred… For their monotonous daily food they have nothing but a little khichri… in the day time, they munch a little parched pulse or other grain, which they say suffices for their lean stomachs… Their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking… Their bedclothes are scanty, merely a sheet or perhaps two… this is sufficient in the hot weather, but the bitter cold nights are miserable indeed, and they try to keep warm over little cowdung fires… the smoke from these fires all over the city is so great that the eyes run, and the throat seems to be choked."

"[the people of Hindustan lived] “as fishes do in the sea - the great ones eat up the little. For first the farmer robs the peasant, the gentlemen robs the farmer, the greater robs the lesser and the King robs all.”"

"There are very many private men in cities and towns, who are merchants or tradesmen that are very rich: but it is not safe for them that are so, so to appear, lest that they should be used as filled sponges."

"There should be left only so much to the Hindus that neither, on the one hand, they should become arrogant on account of their wealth, nor, on the other, desert their lands in despair."

"Mahmud Ghaznavi also collected lot of wealth from Khams. A few facts and figures may be given as illustrations. In his war against Jayapal (1001-02 CE) the latter had to pay a ransom of 2,50,000 dinars (gold coin) for securing release from captivity. Even the necklace of which he was relieved was estimated at 2,00,000 dinars "and twice that value was obtained from the necks of those of his relatives who were taken prisoners or slain..." A couple of years later, all the wealth of Bhera, which was "as wealthy as imagination can conceive," was captured by the conqueror (1004-05 CE). In 1005-06 the people of Multan were forced to pay an indemnity of the value of 20,000,000 (royal) dirhams (silver coin). When Nawasa Shah, who had reconverted to Hinduism, was ousted (1007-08), the Sultan took possession of his treasures amounting to 400,000 dirhams. Shortly after, from the fort of Bhimnagar in Kangra, Mahmud seized coins of the value of 70,000,000 (Hindu Shahiya) dirhams and gold and silver ingots weighing some hundred maunds, jewellery and precious stones. There was also a collapsible house of silver, thirty yards in length and fifteen yards in breadth, and a canopy (mandapika) supported by two golden and two silver poles.19 Such was the wealth obtained that it could not be shifted immediately, and Mahmud had to leave two of his "most confidential" chamberlains, Altuntash and Asightin, to look after its gradual transportation.20 In the succeeding expeditions (1015-20) more and more wealth was drained out of the Punjab and other parts of India. Besides the treasures collected by Mahmud, his soldiers also looted independently. From Baran, Mahmud obtained, 1,000,000 dirhams and from Mahaban, a large booty. in the sack of Mathura five idols alone yielded 98,300 misqals (about 10 maunds) of gold.21 The idols of silver numbered two hundred. Kanauj, Munj, Asni, Sharva and some other places yielded another 3,000,000 dirhams. ... At Somnath his gains amounted to 20,000,000 dinars."

"One idea that struck Alauddin Khalji (1296-1316) was that it was “wealth” which was the “source of rebellion and disaffection.” It encouraged defiance and provided means of “revolt”. He and his counsellors deliberated that if somehow people could be impoverished, “no one would even have time to pronounce the word ‘rebellion’.” ...According to W.H. Moreland “the question really at issue was how to break the power of the rural leaders, the chiefs and the headmen of parganas and villages…” Sultan Alauddin therefore undertook a series of measures to crush them by striking at their major source of power-wealth. But in the process, leaders and followers, rich and poor, all were affected. The king started by raising the land tax (Kharaj) to fifty percent....Furthermore, under Alauddin’s system all the land occupied by the rich and the poor “was brought under assessment at the uniform rate of fifty per cent”. ....In short, a substantial portion of the produce was taken away by the government as taxes and the people were left with the bare minimum for sustenance. For the Sultan had “directed that only so much should be left to his subjects (raiyyat) as would maintain them from year to year… without admitting of their storing up or having articles in excess.” ... Maulana Shamsuddin Turk, a divine from Egypt, was happy to learn that Alauddin had made the wretchedness and misery of the Hindus so great and had reduced them to such a despicable condition “that the Hindu women and children went out begging at the doors of the Musalmans.” ....While summing up the achievements of Alauddin Khalji, the contemporary chronicler Barani mentions, with due emphasis, that by the last decade of his reign the submission and obedience of the Hindus had become an established fact. Such a submission on the part of the Hindus “has neither been seen before nor will be witnessed hereafter.”"

"An important order in the reign of Aurangzeb describes the Jagirdars as demanding in theory only half but in practice actually more than the total yield. Describing the conditions of the latter part of the seventeenth century Mughal empire, Dr. Tara Chand writes: “The desire of the State was to extract the economic rent, so that nothing but bare subsistence. remained for the peasant.” Aurangzeb’s instructions were that “there shall be left for everyone who cultivates his land as much as he requires for his own support till the next crop be reaped and that of his family and for seed. This much shall be left to him, what remains is land tax, and shall go to the public treasury.”"

"Aurangzeb did this for two reasons: first, because by this time his treasures had begun to shrink owing to expenditure on his campaigns ; secondly, to force the Hindus to become Mahomedans. Many who were unable to pay turned Mahomedans, to obtain relief from the insults of the collectors. ... [Aurangzeb] was of the opinion that he had found in this tax an excellent means of succeeding in converting them, besides thereby replenishing his treasuries greatly..."

"(The) plebian sort is so poor that the greatest part of them go naked."

"The Hindu was taxed to the extent of half the produce of his land, and had to pay duties on all his buffaloes, goats, and other milk-cattle. The taxes were to be levied equally on rich and poor, at so much per acre, so much per animal. Any collectors or officers taking bribes were summarily dismissed and heavily punished with sticks, pincers, the rack, imprisonment and chains. The new rules were strictly carried out, so that one revenue officer would string together 20 Hindu notables and enforce payment by blows. No gold or silver, not even the betelnut, so cheering and stimulative to pleasure, was to be seen in a Hindu house, and the wives of the impoverished native officials were reduced to taking service in Muslim families. Revenue officers came to be regarded as more deadly than the plague; and to be a government clerk was disgrace worse than death, in so much that no Hindu would marry his daughter to such a man. ... [These edicts] were so strictly carried out that the chaukidars and khuts and muqad-dims were not able to ride on horseback, to find weapon, to wear fine clothes, or to indulge in betel. . .... No Hindu could hold up his head. ..... Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains were all employed to enforce payment. ""

"Guru Nanak proceeds to describe how the oppressors shaved off the maidens, their ‘heads with braided hair, with vermillion marks in the parting’; how ‘their throats were choked with dust’; how they were cast out of their palatial homes, unable now to sit even in the neighbourhood of their homes; how those who had come to the homes of their husbands in palanquins, decorated with ivory, who lived in the lap of luxury, had been tied with ropes around their necks; how their pearl strings had been shattered; how the very beauty that was their jewel had now become their enemy – ordered to dishonour them, the soldiers had carried them off. ‘Since Babar’s rule has been proclaimed,’ Guru Nanak wrote, ‘even the princes have no food to eat.’"

"The glitter of gems and gold in the Taj Mahal or the Peacock Throne ought not to blind us to the fact that in Mughal India, man was considered vile; - the mass of the people had no economic liberty, no indefeasible right to justice or personal freedom, when their oppressor was a noble or high official or landowner; political rights were not dreamt of... The Government was in effect despotism tempered by revolution or fear of revolution."

"The Sultan requested the wise men to supply some rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus, and for depriving them of that wealth and property which fosters disaffection and rebellion. ... The people were brought to such a state of obedience that one revenue officer would string twenty khiits, mukaddims, or chaudharis together by the neck, and enforce payment by blows. No Hindu could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver, tonkas or jitals, or of any superfluity was to be seen. These things, which nourish insubordination and rebellion, were no longer to be found. Driven by destitution, the wives of the khuls and mukaddims went and served for hire in the houses of the Musulmans.... The Hindu was to be so reduced as to be left un- able to keep a horse to ride on, to carry arms, to wear fine clothes, or to enjoy any of the luxuries of life. .... I have, therefore, taken my measures, and have made my subjects obedient, so that at my command they are ready to creep into holes like mice. Now you tell me that it is all in accordance with law that the Hindus should be reduced to the most abject obedience.I am an unlettered man, but I have seen a great deal; be assured then that the Hindus will never become submissive and obedient till they are reduced to poverty. I have, therefore, given orders that just sufficient shall be left to them from year to year, of corn, milk, and curds, but that they shall not be allowed to accumulate hoards and property.""

"The resultant effect of [Alauddins] policy was that the people in the villages suffered from extreme financial hardship. The poverty of Indians was noticed in the later period by foreigners."

"It should…be noted that this vogue, or rather vice, of cutting a great figure by the splendour of great expenditure is one of the contagions which the Moors or Mohammedans have introduced to and spread throughout Hindustan... For the most, it is just the contrary among the gentiles, that is to say, among those who in no way follow in the steps of the Moors. Although, in the general corruption which this monarchy has in the last years reached, one sees enough in Delhi, the Indian Babylon, and elsewhere, who follow the court’s example and whose children are today in the same indigence and misery as those whose conduct they have emulated. I speak of those gentiles who, having entered commerce, are remote from those employments which more or less entail luxury. These are little concerned with appearance and making a fuss in the world with a greater entourage or more numerous domestics or more excessive costs than they had seen in the houses of their fathers and forebears. One observes the same domestics, the same livery, the same meals and more or less the same expenses in their households, although their property increases and their riches multiply. And, it is in truth a matter worthy of attention that the gentiles pass on by descendance the same wealth, often augmented, while the Moors, and those who emulate them in their ways of living, deplete in little time the immense sums they have inherited, or which have come to their hands through fate. Temperance, sobriety and parsimony, as well as the science of commerce, must be sought in India amongst the gentiles. I would further say, that one finds antiquity respective of their food and clothing, in their general way of life, considering that one remarks therein simplicity, the surest and, I think, strongest proof of the most remote heritage. For, one must avow that the simplest and most natural usage which men make of things they need has been the first and only which they have embraced and through example transmitted to posterity. Many things of which we make today necessity are but luxury and corruption; whereas, one lived in another age just as content, and perhaps happier, without knowing of them."

"It has been observed elsewhere (vide Memoires des Pattans) that this economy and parsimony of the majority of gentiles was the reason for which usually they, and not the Moors, were employed by the nawabs and mighty personages, even Mohammedans, for the farming out of taxes and revenues of their governments, as well as in private affairs. It is they who everywhere manage all kinds of expenditure. One might imagine that it is because of the arrogance of the Moors, who think themselves too noble to tend to such matters, if one did not know from experience that with a Mohammedan at the head of an administration, where the revenues would fall to him, the master must expect to be badly paid and, at the end of a few years, be ruined before he knew it. Everywhere in Hindustan, at all the courts, beginning with the royal houses and even in those of wealthy private individuals, the diwans, or intendants, collectors, prosecutors, secretaries, inspectors, etc. are gentiles. It is to them that the Moors trust, putting in their hands the care and management of their affairs. The Moors, having consumed the revenues from the provinces of which they had the intendancy with balls, feasts, equipages and entourages to make themselves believe to be sovereign lords of the country of which they were intendants, ceased then to be so, subsequently pursued by their masters when time came to account for the administration. Having sold the furniture, chattels and all things which one could confiscate (excepting on several occasions what one had been shrewd enough to place in security), they declared themselves faqirs, that is to say, weary of the world and resolved to leave it with the pretext of awaiting nothing more than a divine life, retired and removed from all troubles. A skullcap rather than a turban on the head, the simple habit or robe of a monk, reddish in hue, a rosary in place of sabre in hand, staff in the other, and what is more, the Koran under the arm, afforded immediate protection from the pursuit of the treasurer or other court representatives, as well as from the creditors. Rather like that race of privileged thieves in Europe who, establishing their success on the ruin of others, declare bankruptcy at an opportune moment to enjoy unmolested the fortune acquired through their devious and deceitful ways. The people of India are foolish enough to respect these rogues…"

"Penal laws are scarce known among the Hindoos; for their motives to bad actions are few. Temperate in their living, and delicate in their constitutions, their passions are calm, and they have no object but that of living with comfort and ease. Timid and submissive, from the coldness of a vegetable diet, they have a natural abhorrence to blood. Industrious and frugal, they possess wealth which they never use. Those countries, governed by native princes, which lay beyond the devastations of the Mahommedans, are rich, and cultivated to the highest degree. Their governors encourage industry and commerce; and it is to the ingenuity of the Hindoos, we owe all the fine manufactures in the East. During the empire of the Moguls, the trade of India was carried on by the followers of Brahma. The bankers, scribes, and managers of finance were native Hindoos, and the wisest princes of the family of Timur protected and encouraged such peaceable and useful subjects."

"Slavery has sharpened the natural finess of all the spirits of Asia. From the difficulty of obtaining, and the greater difficulty of preserving it, the Gentoos are indefatigable in business, and masters of the most exquisite dissimulation in all affairs of interest. They are the acutest buyers and sellers in the world, and preserve through all their bargains a degree of calmness, which baffles all the arts that can be opposed against it. The children are capable of assisting them in their business at an age when ours scarce begin to learn. It is common to see a boy of eleven years into an assembly of considerable men, make his obeisance, deliver his message, and then retire with all the propriety and grace of a very well-bred man."

"No nation will take from another what it can furnish cheaper and better itself. In India, almost every article which the inhabitants require, is made cheaper and better than in Europe. Among these are all cotton and silk manufactures, leather, paper, domestic utensils of brass and iron, and implements of agriculture. Their coarse woolens though bad, will always keep their ground from their superior cheapness; their finer camblets are warmer and more lasting than ours…Their simple mode of living dictated both by caste and climate, renders all our furniture and ornaments for the decoration of the house and the table utterly unserviceable to the Hindus: living in low mud houses, eating on the bare earth, they cannot require the various articles used among us. They have no tables; their houses are not furnished, except those of the rich, which have a small carpet, or a few mats and pillows. The Hindus eat alone, many from caste in the open air, others under sheds, and out of leaves of trees in preference to plates. But this is the picture, perhaps, of the unfortunate native reduced to poverty by European oppression under the Company’s monopoly? No, it is equally that of the highest and richest Hindu in every part of India. It is that of the Minister of State. His dwelling is little better than a shed; the walls are naked, and the mud floor, for the sake of coolness, is every morning sprinkled with a mixture of water and cow-dung. He has no furniture in it. He distributes food to whoever wants it, but he gives no grand dinners to his friends. He throws aside his upper garments, and with nothing but a cloth around his loins, he sits down half-naked, and eats his meal alone, upon the bare earth, and under the open sky... There is such a strange mixture of fraud and honesty in the natives of India, and even in the same individuals, in different circumstances, that none but a native can, on many occasions, penetrate the motives from which such opposite conduct arises. The numerous petty dealings constantly going on, with comparatively very few disputes, the frequency of depositing money and valuable articles without any kind of voucher, and the general practice of lending money without any kind of receipt or document but the accounts of the parties, manifest a high degree of mutual confidence, which can originate only in a conviction of the probity of each other. But, on the other hand, every native will perjure himself. In every litigation respecting water, boundaries of villages, and privileges of caste – in all these cases, he never speaks the truth, unless from the accident of its being on the side which he conceives himself bound to espouse. He will also perjure himself (not uniformly indeed, yet with little hesitation) in favour of a relation a friend, or an inhabitant of the same village; and even in favour of persons in whose welfare he has apparently no concern. These causes, added to bribery, render perjury so common, that scarcely any dependence can be placed upon evidence, unless where it is supported by collateral proofs. The number of witnesses, and even their general character, is therefore of less consequence than an acquaintance with those particulars, customs, and prejudices by which their evidence is likely to be biased."

"We need not feel embarrassed to advocate economic nationalism...Our government functionaries also must not feel shy to work closely with business. Jointly they should ensure that India's economic interests are protected -- through trade, investment, and foreign policy measures.."

"The economy has collapsed due to this unprecedented challenge of Covid-19. The worst sufferers are the informal sector workers, daily wagers and the poor. We need a complete reboot of our economy and we must ensure that at least now we use this as an opportunity and build an environmentally sustainable model which is human economy, ensuring living wages to all and not perpetuating and furthering inequality."

"India's bane is the profesional 'povertywallas': the politicians who have incessantly mouthed slogans such as 'garibi hathao' … and the economists who write continually about 'abysmal poverty'. Both have generally espoused policies, such as defending public sector enterprises at any cost, discounting and even opposing liberal reforms, promoting white-elephant style projects that use capital-intensive techniques on unrealistic grounds such as that they would create profits and savings when in fact they have drained the economy through losses..."

"It is almost a cliché to describe India as rich in institutional infrastructure and poor in physical infrastructure."

"There is no doubt in my mind that India is one of the great financial success stories of the future. The curse of India is that Indians lack pride in being Indian. The moment they have that pride, India will be the next Japan."

"If we stop thinking of the poor as victims, or as a burden, and start recognising them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up.""

"When Robert McNamara was president of the World Bank, he visited Dharavi, near Mumbai airport, then, as now, one of the largest slums in the world. Looking at the abject poverty in the shantytown, he broke down, possibly realising the enormity of the task ahead."

"In 2014, one of the key agendas of the BJP’s election campaign was highlighting the dismal management of the Indian economy, ironically under an ‘economist’ prime minister and a ‘know-it-all’ finance minister. We all knew that the economy was in the doldrums but since we were not in government, we naturally did not have the complete details of the state of the economy. But, what we saw when we formed the government left us shocked! The state of the economy was much worse than expected. Things were terrible. Even the budget figures were suspicious. When all of this came to light, we had two options – to be driven by Rajneeti (political considerations) or be guided by Rashtraneeti (putting the interests of India First)... Rajneeti, or playing politics on the state of the economy in 2014, would have been extremely simple as well as politically advantageous for us. We had just won a historic election, so obviously the frenzy was at a different level. The Congress Party and their allies were in big trouble. Even for the media, it would have made news for months on end. On the other hand, there was Rashtraneeti, where more than politics and one-upmanship, reform was needed. Needless to say, we preferred to think of ‘India First’ instead of putting politics first. We did not want to push the issues under the carpet, but we were more interested in addressing the issue. We focused on reforming, strengthening and transforming the Indian economy. The details about the decay in the Indian economy were unbelievable. It had the potential to cause a crisis all over. In 2014, industry was leaving India. India was in the Fragile Five. Experts believed that the ‘I’ in BRICS would collapse. Public sentiment was that of disappointment and pessimism."

"You [media persons] remember what we do for two days out of two years, but where the [Gujarat] government travels to the countryside for a month every year and promotes agriculture, you are not interested. The result of such attitude is that the Manmohan Singh government's targeted [annual] agricultural growth [rate] of four per cent is stuck at 2.5%. The [year-on-year] agricultural growth in my Gujarat is 14%, but no one looks at it."

"India held back a little longer, but an Indian economist, Parth Shah, tells me that the country started looking at what was happening around them, in Taiwan, South Korea and now also China: ‘We saw that they actually changed their model and they did succeed in what they had done, and it was time for India to learn the lesson.’ That was decisive in 1991, when a debt-financed boom crashed and the foreign exchange reserve had shrunk to such a level that India was three weeks from running out of money. The crisis prompted the Minister of Finance Manmohan Singh to quote the nineteenth-century romantic Victor Hugo in parliament: ‘No power on earth can resist an idea whose time has come.’ The idea was to dismantle trade barriers and stifling regulations that held India back and kept half the population in extreme poverty. In the past, economists spoke condescendingly of the ‘Hindu growth rate’ as if there was some kind of complacency built into the country’s tradition that stopped the economy from growing faster than the population. After the reforms of 1991 and those that followed, this culture changed as if by magic and growth took off. Today, average income is three times greater than before reform and extreme poverty is only one-fifth of previous levels."

"She reads the mind behind the capitalist conspiracy to reform Hinduism thus: "Capitalism is often believed to thrive among Semitic religions such as Christianity and Islam. The argument would then run that if capitalism is to succeed in India, then Hinduism would also have to be moulded in a Semitic form"."

"‘Under the capitalist system, in order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation – an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream’."

"Of Sanskrit, Sri Aurobindo writes: Every one of its vowels and consonants has a particular inalienable force which exists by the nature of things and not by development or human choice; these are the fundamental sounds which lie at the base of the Tantric bija-mantras and constitute the efficacy of the mantra itself. Every vowel and every consonant in the original language had certain primary meanings which arose out of [some] essential Shakti or force, and [these] were the basis of other derivative meanings."

"Sanskrit should be deleted from the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution because it is a foreign language brought to the country by foreign invaders - the Aryans."

"The Ancient and classical creations of the Sanskrit tongue both in quality and in body and abundance of excellence, in their potent originality and force and beauty, in their substance the height and width of the reach of their spirit stand very evidently in the front rank among the world's great literatures."

"A language, Sanskrit or another, should be acquired by whatever method is most natural, efficient and stimulating to the mind and we need not cling there to any past or present manner of teaching: but the vital question is how we are to learn and make use of Sanskrit and the indigenous languages so as to get to the heart and intimate sense of our own culture and establish a vivid continuity between the still living power of our past and the yet uncreated power of our future, and how we are to learn and use English or any other foreign tongue so as to know helpfully the life, ideas and culture of other countries and establish our right relations with the world around us. This is the aim and principle of a true national education, not, certainly, to ignore modern truth and knowledge, but to take our foundation on our own being, our own mind, our own spirit...."

"The attempt to render in a European tongue the grand panorama of the ever periodically recurring Law -- impressed upon the plastic minds of the first races endowed with Consciousness by those who reflected the same from the Universal Mind -- is daring, for no human language, save the Sanskrit -- which is that of the Gods -- can do so with any degree of adequacy."

"It was in India, however, that there rose a body of knowledge which was destined to revolutionize European ideas about language. The Hindu grammar taught Europeans to analyze speech forms; when one compared the constituent parts, the resemblances, which hitherto had been vaguely recognized, could be set forth with certainty and precision."

"There is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost 1000 years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its own. Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century."

"The richness of Sanskrit language is almost beyond belief. Many centuries ago that language contained words to describe states of the conscious and the subconscious and the unconscious mind and a variety of other concepts which have been evolved by modern psychoanalysis and psyche-therapy. Further, it has many a word, of which there is no exact synonym even in the richest modern languages. That is why some modern writers have been driven occasionally to use Sanskrit words when writing in English."

"“… Sanskrit still allows a poet to transcend his or her parochial context and reach out to a space shaped by a wider, inherited discourse. At the same time, Sanskrit enables a skilled poet to condense into the space of a single work— even a single verse — an entire world of specific associations, contents and meaning… It is clear, at least to me, that Sanskrit did not share Latin’s fate. Intense regionalization in the literary realm tended to go hand in hand with highly innovative “Sanskritization”, to use an old term— that is, continuous experimentation with both new forms of Sanskrit literary production and the canonical terms, categories and modes of Sanskrit-informed culture and theory more generally. There were, of course, tensions, rivalries, and all kinds of exotic combinations, many of them internal to the emerging vernaculars themselves; but far from contributing to the demise of Sanskrit as a powerful imaginative vehicle, these very tensions provide acute evidence of its continuous cultural vitality.”"

"Sanskrit, “serving as an available and localized medium in each and every region separately, participated along with the vernaculars in the project of inventing and elaborating distinctive regional cultures and identities. Far from occluding such regional distinctiveness or uniqueness, Sanskrit was now employed precisely to articulate it”"

"Lord Monboddo, (1774), for example, felt that he would "be able clearly to prove that Greek is derived from the Shanscrit" (322). Halhed stated: "I do not ascertain as a fact, that either Greek or Latin are derived from this language; but I give a few reasons wherein such a conjecture might be found: and I am sure that it has a better claim to the honour of a parent than Phoenician or Hebrew (Letter to G. Costard, quoted in Marshall 1970, 10). Schlegel, (1977 [1808]), who played a leading role in stimulating interest in Sanskrit, especially in Germany, developed the concept of comparative grammar wherein "the Indian language is older, the others younger and derived from it" (429). Vans Kennedy (1828) felt the evidence demonstrated that "Sanscrit itself is the primitive language from which Greek, Latin, and the mother of the Teutonic dialects were originally derived" (196). These ideas were picked up by intellectuals outside the halls of academia: Blavatsky (1975), the theosophist, claimed that "Old Sanskrit is the origin of all the less ancient Indo-European languages, as well as of the modern European tongues and dialects" (115)."

"[Sanskrit is] the great spiritual language of the world."

"Sanskrit was a complete success and became the language of all cultured people in India and in countries under Indian influence. All scientific, philosophical, historical works were henceforth written in Sanskrit, and important texts existing in other languages were translated and adapted into Sanskrit. For this reason, very few ancient literary, religious, or philosophical documents exits in India in other languages. The sheer volume of Sanskrit literature is immense, and it remains largely unexplored. .... Sanskrit is constructed like geometry and follows a rigorous logic. It is theoretically possible to explain the meaning of the words according to the combined sense of the relative letters, syllables and roots. Sanskrit has no meanings by connotations and consequently does not age. Panini's language is in no way different from that of Hindu scholars conferring in Sanskrit today."

"The creation of Sanskrit, the “refined” language, was a prodigious work on a grand scale. Grammarians and semanticists of genius undertook to create a perfect language, artificial and permanent, belonging to no one, that was to become the language of the entire culture. Sanskrit is built on a basis of Vedic and the Prakrits, but has a much more complex grammar, established according to a rigorous logic. It has an immense vocabulary and a very adaptable grammar, so that words can be grouped together to express any nuance of an idea, and verb forms can be found to cover any possibility of tense, such as future intentional in the past, present continuing into the future, and so on. Furthermore, Sanskrit possesses a wealth of abstract nouns, technical and philosophical terms unknown in any other language. Modern Indian scholars of Sanskrit culture have often remarked that many of the new concepts of nuclear physics or modern psychology are easy for them to grasp, since they correspond exactly to familiar notions of Sanskrit terminology."

"The majesty and grandeur of the Sanskrit language, the sonorousness of the word music, the rise and fall of the rhythm rolling in waves, the elasticity of meaning and the conventional atmosphere that appears in it have always made it charming to those for whom it was written. ...The wealth of imagery, the vividness of description of natural scenes, the underlying suggestiveness of higher ideals and the introduction of imposing personalities often lead great charm to Sanskrit poetry."

"The introduction of the use of Sanskrit as the lingu-franca is a turning point in the mental history of the Indian people. The causes that preceded it, the changes in the intellectual standpoint that went with it, the results that followed on both, are each of them of vital importance."

"A university teaches. What does it teach? It must obviously teach all the languages in which the great literatures which have been preserved were written — Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, Scandinavian, and English."

"Macaulay's policy was implemented and became a resounding success. The pre-Macaulayan vernacular system of education was destroyed, even though British surveys had found it more effective and more democratic than the then-existing education system in Britain. The rivalling educationist party, the so-called Orientalists, had proposed a Sanskrit-based system of education, in which Indian graduates would not have been as estranged from their mother civilization as they became through English education, and in which they could have selectively adopted the useful elements of Western modernity, more or less the way Japan modernized itself."

"Old India had a high rate of literacy, particularly because of its educational system, its Sanskrit and its gurukulams."

"The literature of the Sanskrit language incontestably belongs to a highly cultivated people, whom we may with great reason consider to have been the most informed of all the Epics. It is, at the same time, a scientific and a poetic literature. Hindu literature is one of the richest in prose and poetry."

"I called up the Devil and he appeared .... He is an able diplomat and speaks eloquently of Church and State. He is somewhat pale but small's the wonder. for he is now studying Sanskrit and Hegel."

"The fact is that Sanskrit is more deeply interwoven into the fabric of the collective world consciousness than anyone perhaps knows. After many thousands of years, Sanskrit still lives with a vitality that can breathe life, restore unity and inspire peace on our tired and troubled planet. It is a sacred gift, an opportunity. The future could be very bright. ... In ancient India the intention to discover truth was so consuming, that in the process, they discovered perhaps the most perfect tool for fulfilling such a search that the world has ever known — the Sanskrit language. ... With the Muslim invasions from 1100 A.D. onwards, Sanskrit gradually became displaced by common languages patronized by the Muslim kings as a tactic to suppress Indian cultural and religious tradition and supplant it with their own beliefs. But they could not eliminate the literary and spiritual-ritual use of Sanskrit."

"Sanskrit means “complete”, “perfect” and “definitive”. In fact, this language is extremely elaborate, almost artificial, and is capable of describing multiple levels of meditation, states of consciousness and psychic, spiritual and even intellectual processes. As for vocabulary, its richness is considerable and highly diversified. Sanskrit has for centuries lent itself admirably to the diverse rules of prosody and versification. Thus we can see why poetry has played such a preponderant role in all of Indian culture and Sanskrit literature."

"Sanskrit, a language which belongs to the Indo-European group and has been the chief literary vehicle of Indian thought, is an instrument admirably adapted to give expression to every subtlety of human thought, every nuance of human feeling."

"The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either: yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without believing them to have sprung from some common source which perhaps no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family."

"There is a great misconception about Sanskrit that it is only a language to be recited as mantras in temples or in religious ceremonies. However, that is only 5% of the Sanskrit literature. The remaining 95% has nothing to do with religion. In particular, Sanskrit was the language in which all our great scientists in ancient India wrote their works. ... The word `Sanskrit' means “prepared, pure, refined or prefect”. It was not for nothing that it was called the `devavani' (language of the Gods). It has an outstanding place in our culture and indeed was recognized as a language of rare sublimity by the whole world. Sanskrit was the language of our philosophers, our scientists, our mathematicians, our poets and playwrights, our grammarians, our jurists, etc. In grammar, Panini and Patanjali (authors of Ashtadhyayi and the Mahabhashya) have no equals in the world; in astronomy and mathematics the works of Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara opened up new frontiers for mankind, as did the works of Charaka and Sushruta in medicine. ... In philosophy Gautam (founder of the Nyaya system), Ashvaghosha (author of Buddha Charita), Kapila (founder of the Sankhya system), Shankaracharya, Brihaspati, etc., present the widest range of philosophical systems the world has ever seen, from deeply religious to strongly atheistic. Jaimini's Mimansa Sutras laid the foundation of a whole system of rational interpretation of texts which was used not only in religion but also in law, philosophy, grammar, etc. In literature, the contribution of Sanskrit is of the foremost order. The works of Kalidasa (Shakuntala, Meghdoot, Malavikagnimitra, etc.), Bhavabhuti (Malti Madhav, Uttar Ramcharit, etc.) and the epics of Valmiki, Vyasa, etc. are known all over the world. These and countless other Sanskrit works kept the light of learning ablaze in our country upto modern times."

"Sanskrit appears to have lost far fewer items and preserves much greater organic coherence than the other branches. This supports the general idea that Sanskrit is much closer to Proto-Indo-European and that, since this could only happen in sedentary conditions, the Indoaryan speakers of Sanskrit did not move (much) from the original homeland."

"The main point is that Sanskrit had long been an Indian language when it made its appearance in history."

"Since the Renaissance there has been no event of such worldwide significance in the history of culture as the discovery of Sanskrit literature in the latter part of the eighteenth century."

"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."

"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 (Pollock) 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... 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."

"Besides the large number of schools at that time, there were also approximately a hundred institutions of higher learning in each district of Bengal and Bihar. Unfortunately, these numbers rapidly dwindled all across India during the nineteenth century under British rule. The British also noted that Sanskrit books were being widely used to teach grammar, lexicology, mathematics, medical science, logic, law and philosophy. ....Furthermore, in the early British period in India, British officials noted that education for the masses was more advanced and widespread in India than it was in England. ....According to Dharampal, the British later replaced this Sanskrit-based system with their own English-based one, the goal being to produce low-level clerks for the British administration."

"Sanskrit is the artificial language par excellence, patiently refined sound by sound...embracing all the levels of being physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. It is ideally suited to describe and govern the nature of phenomena from the spiritual level to the physical. This range of applicability in the realm of nature paradoxically makes this most artificial language the most natural language, the language of nature."

"Sanskrit is a beautiful, powerful, resonating language, with a structure and richness not found within most modern languages. The logic and beauty within Sanskrit reflect the two levels needed to appreciate Ayurveda fully; the outer knowledge passed on from teachers and books, and the inner knowledge or intuition gained through experience, by applying what we learn to our daily lives."

"There are many points of great interest to the student of language, in the long history of the speech [of India]; and it has been truly said that Sanskrit is to the science of language what mathematics is to astronomy."

"Sanskrit is still looked upon as an unwelcome guest by many classical scholars and anything that can be said against it is welcomed by all who dislike the trouble of learning a new language’."

"Sanskrit has many virtues that attract. Its grammar has been rigorously analyzed, but not in a doctrinaire way – there is room for intellectual debate. The classical Indian culture in which Sanskrit first flourished offers an immense variety of material, from romantic comedy and sensual poetry to epic, massive-word play, political science and philosophy. It embodies a contradiction, that a language whose literature is so lithe, should be indigenously analyzed as a sort of architectural structure. And I suppose I like the fact that it is so difficult (coming from English, certainly), yet so familiar in another way (coming at it from Latin, Greek and Russian)."

"Sanskrit (meaning "cultured or refined"), the classical language of Hinduism, is the oldest and the most systematic language in the world. The vastness and the versatility, and power of expression can be appreciated by the fact that this language has 65 words to describe various forms of earth, 67 words for water, and over 250 words to describe rainfall."

"Proposals to include Sanskrit in the course offerings were rejected numerous times by scholars who wanted to protect JNU from what they considered to be a majoritarian or Hindu Nationalist agenda. When I questioned Romila Thapar, a well known historian from JNU, about this issue in July 2000, she explained that if students want to learn Sanskrit, “there are so many Maths and Piths around where they can go”. She added that “most of the regional colleges have some kind of Sanskrit program”."

"The Sanskrit shall be our "devabhasha" (Deva Bhasha) our sacred language and the "Sanskrit Nishtha" Hindi, the Hindi which is derived from Sanskrit and draws its nourishment from the latter, is our rashtrabhasha (Rashtra Bhasha) our current national language—-besides being the richest and the most cultured of the ancient languages of the world, to us Hindus the Sanskrit is the holiest tongue of tongues. Our scriptures, history, philosophy and culture have their roots so deeply imbedded in the Sanskrit literature that it forms veritably the brain of our Race. Mother of the majority of our mother tongues, she has suckled the rest of them at her breast. All Hindu languages current today whether derived from Sanskrit or grafted on to it can only grow and flourish on the sap of life they imbibe from Sanskrit. The Sanskrit language therefore must ever be an indispensable constituent of the classical course for Hindu youths."

"Our Gods spoke in Sanskrit; our sages thought in Sanskrit, our poets wrote in Sanskrit. All that is best in us—the best thoughts, the best ideas, the best lines—seeks instinctively to clothe itself in Sanskrit. To millions it is still the language of their Gods; to others it is the language of their ancestors; to all it is the language par excellence; a common inheritance, a common treasure that enriches all the family of our sister languages."

"I believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century."

"There is no language in the world, even Greek, which has the clarity and the philosophical precision of Sanskrit. India is not only at the origin of everything she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison."

"Justly it is called Sanskrit, ie. perfected, finished. In its structure and grammar, it closely resembles the Greek, but is infinitely more regular and therefore more simple, though not less rich. It combines fullness, indicative of Greek development, the brevity and nice accuracy of Latin; whilst having a near affinity to the Persian and German roots, it is distinguished by expression as enthusiastic and forcible as theirs."

"It is true that the Indian is almost entirely a philosophical or rather a religious language, and perhaps none, not even excepting the Greek, is so philosophically clear and sharply defined."

"It was an astounding discovery that India possessed, in spite of the changes of realms and variety, a language, the parent of all those dialects that Europe has fondly called classical - the source alike of Greek flexibility and Roman strength. A philosophy, compared with which, in point of age, the lessons of Pythagoras are but of yesterday, and in point of daring speculation Plato's boldest efforts were tame and commonplace. A poetry more purely intellectual than any of those of which we had before any conception; and systems of science whose antiquity baffled all power of astronomical calculation. This literature, with all its colossal proportions, which can scarcely be described without the semblance of bombast and exaggeration claimed of course a place for itself - it stood alone, and it was able to stand alone."

"To acquire the mastery of this language is almost a labor of a life; its literature seems exhaustless. The utmost stretch of imagination can scarcely comprehend its boundless mythology. Its philosophy has touched upon every metaphysical difficulty; its legislation is as varied as the castes for which it was designed."

"The consonantal division of the alphabet of the Sanskrit language was a more wonderful feat of human genius than any the world has yet seen."

"Sanskrit no doubt has an immense advantage over all other ancient languages of the East. It is so attractive and has been so widely admired, that it almost seems at times to excite a certain amount of feminine jealousy. We are ourselves Indo-Europeans. In a certain sense we are still speaking and thinking Sanskrit; or more correctly Sanskrit is like a dear aunt to us and she takes the place of a mother who is no more."

"God spoke once. He spoke in Sanskrit, and that is the divine language."

"Just look at Sanskrit. Look at the Sanskrit of the Brâhmanas, Shabara Swâmi's commentary on the Mimâmsâ philosophy, the Mahâbhâshya of Patanjali, and, finally, at the great Commentary of Achârya Shankara: and look also at the Sanskrit of comparatively recent times. You will at once understand that so long as a man is alive, he talks a living language, but when he is [[dead, he speaks a dead language."

"Sanskrit and prestige go together in India."

"Sanskrit is the divine language."

"Sanskrit is the language of God."

"The great difficulty in the way is the Sanskrit language — the glorious language of ours; and this difficulty cannot be removed until — if it is possible — the whole of our nation are good Sanskrit scholars. You will understand the difficulty when I tell you that I have been studying this language all my life, and yet every new book is new to me. How much more difficult would it then be for people who never had time to study the language thoroughly!"

"The very sound of the Sanskrit is musical."

"The very sound of Sanskrit words gives a prestige and a power and a strength to the race."

"This Sanskrit language is so intricate, the Sanskrit of the Vedas is so ancient, and the Sanskrit philology so perfect, that any amount of discussion can be carried on for ages in regard to the meaning of one word. If a Pandit takes it into his head, he can render anybody's prattle into correct Sanskrit by force of argument and quotation of texts and rules."

"In philology, our Sanskrit language is now universally acknowledged to be the foundation of all European languages, which, in fact, are nothing but jargonized Sanskrit."

"India though it has more than five hundred spoken dialects, has only one sacred language and only one sacred literature, accepted and revered by all adherence of Hinduism alike, however diverse in race, dialect, rank and creed. That language is Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature, the only repository of the Veda or knowledge in its widest sense, the only vehicle of Hindu mythology, philosophy, law, the mirror in which all the creeds, opinions, and customs and usages of the Hindus are faithfully reflected and the only quarry whence the requisite materials may be obtained for improving the vernaculars or for expressing important religious and scientific ideas."

"By Sanskrit is meant the learned language of India - the language of its cultured inhabitants, the language of its religion, its literature and science - not by any means a dead language, but one still spoken and written by educated men by all parts of the country, from Kashmir to Cape Comorin, from Bombay to Calcutta and Madras."

"The system of learning Bengalee among the natives .... their notion of learning Bengalee was by learning Sanscrit. If you make a man a good Sanscrit scholar he will be able to write Bengalee with perfect accuracy and elegance.... Bengalee is the language most akin to Sanscrit. I have taken pains to ascertain the proportion of Sanscrit in the first 500 words... they amount to 350.... Sanscrit forms the very body of most of the dialects, particularly of Upper India, and though it is not so essentially a part of the languages of Southern India, yet it enters so largely into the composition of even the language of Malabar, that four-fifths of the words are Sanscrit."

"As regard the first point I am told that in an Indian University even Sanskrit is taught in English which means that only those who know the latter tongue can learn the classic language of event their own country. To me this seems an absurdity ... The Indian cannot I suppose write a grammar. Yet India has Panini, Patanjali, Patanjali's Mahabhasya, Supadma, Kalapa, the Vakyapadiya, Bhopadeva, Sangkshiptasara, Siddantakaumudi, Laghukaumudi, amongst the ancient, while the Vyakarana Kaumudi, Upakramanika of Ishvara Chandra Vidyasagara, and the Ashubodha ofTaranatha Vachaspati head the modems. How IS it that all these have been displaced? A distinguished European Sanskritist once asked me where I had learned Sanskrit, but that I had been and was still learning Sanskrit in this country. "Oh what a pity," he said, "Why" I asked? "They cannot teach Sanskrit in this country: they have no system." He replied. I laughed."

"Kannada has been declared as Official Language of the State and is being used in all correspondences at all levels of Administration in the State in accordance with the provisions of Karnataka Official Language Act, 1963 (Karnataka Act 26 of 1963)."

"Representations were received from a wide spectrum of political and civil opinion from both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh for declaration of Kannada and Telugu languages as Classical Languages. These representations were referred to a Committee of Linguistic Experts and the Committee has recently recommended that both Telugu and Kannada languages should be classified as Classical Languages."

"It has now been decided by the Government of India that on the occasion of the Rajyotsava day in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh formation day in Andhra Pradesh which fall on Ist November to declare Kannada and Telugu as Classical Languages."

"Karnataka's linguistic diversity means that many list other languages as their first and Kannada as a second language. This adds 11.5 million to the ranks of Kannada speakers and another 1.4 million use it as a third language. In total, Kannada had 50.8 million speakers in 2001 compared to Gujarati's 50.3 million."

"The oldest well-preserved palm leaf manuscript is that of Dhavala, preserved in Jain Bhandar, Mudbidri. The manuscript contains 1478 leaves written in ink in old Kannada|old Kannada of about 9th century A.D."

"Kannada is the major Dravidian language of Karnataka in southern India."

"The long-drawn movement by Kannadigas to secure classical language status to Kannada language got a shot in the arm with a Mysore-based scholar discovering an inscription, which is said to be at least 50 years older than Halmidi inscription — the earliest known record in Kannada characters and is dated 450 A.D."

"Nishadhi is the oldest known Kannada language inscription dating to 400 A.D."

"Although this undated inscription has a mention in the Epigraphia Karnataka, epigraphists, who decoded Gunabhushitana Nishadi Shasana have said that “the purport of the inscription is not clear."

"Although there is a disagreement among epigraphists about the antiquity, Halmidi inscription is considered as the oldest known Kannada language inscription. This undated inscription was discovered in 1936 by M.H. Krishna, Director of Archaeology in the princely State of Mysore at Halmidi in Hassan taluk."

"After in-depth study I figured out Prakrit, Sanskrit and Purvada Halegannada words. I was aware of the fact that there are no Prakrit words in Halmidi inscription. The four-lined inscription has six words, besides Prakrit words. I also discovered that the inscription is in Shatavahana Brahmi and Aadi Ganga script. With great difficulty I restructured the text of inscription and reached the conclusion that the inscription in question is much older than Halmidi inscription."

"There was no doubt that Gunabhushitana Nishadi Shasana was a Kannada inscription, which was in Purvada Halegannada script. The inscription in all probability was older by 50 to 100 years than Halmidi inscription. “In case the complete text is made available to me, I am interested in studying it"."

"The word Isila found in the Ashokan inscription (called the Brahmagiri edict from Karnataka) meaning to shoot an arrow is a Kannada word, indicating that Kannada was a spoken language in the third century BC."

"Kannada is considered the oldest language next to Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil. According to linguists, Tamil and Kannada branched off simultaneously from the Dravidian language of South India before the Christian Era."

"The names of a few places referred to by Ptolemy (A.D. 150) in his geographical treatise are undoubtedly the ancient forms of present day names of places in Karnataka."

"The "Halmidi inscription" has put an end to many controversies surrounding the evolution of Kannada. The 16-line inscription, which is on rectangular sandstone with a height of 2.5 ft. and a width of 1 ft., has a Vishnu Chakra on its top. The earliest Kannada inscription found at Halmidi in w:BelurBelur taluk of Hassan district is dated 450 A.D., and it is the earliest known record in Kannada characters."

"The language is known as "Poorvada Halegannada" (primitive Kannada), with distinctive characteristics resembling those of Tamil. Halmidi is a small village in the north of Hassan district with a population of 1,200, and was known as `Palmidi' and `Hanumidi'. However, the people of the village recently decided to retain the name Halmidi The inscription has become a subject of study for those who conduct research on the Kannada script, etymology, and Dravidian linguistics."

"Every word of the inscription has inspired linguists and set off debates on etymology. Although Halmidi has made a significant contribution to the history and culture of Kannada, the village has been neglected... the Hassan district unit of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat has taken steps to make it an important centre for students of literature and linguistics."

"As the inscription cannot be read easily, a replica [has been] readied in the Memorial Hall to give all information contained in it."

"Coin has inscription in archaic Kannada script found at Banavasi, capital of the Kadambas is said to be the first such coin found in the State. One side has a five-letter inscription and the other the symbol of Ujjain."

"Though punch-marked and Satavahana coins had been discovered in Karnataka, this is the first coin with an inscription in archaic Kannada."

"The discovery of the 5th century copper coin proves beyond doubt that Banavasi had a mint, and the tradition of minting coins with names or titles in Kannada was in vogue as early as the 5th century."

"Kannada has a long history of dictionary-making, beginning from the dictionary written by Rannakanda of the 10th century till the dictionary produced by the Sahitya Parishat in the 20th century."

"Kannada is rich in dialects, such as Havyaka and Sanketi, apart from many regional varieties."

"Rev. F. Kittel, a great scholar in many languages including Sanskrit, studied Kannada and took up the task of compiling a Kannada-English dictionary. He started the compilation in a thorough and systematic manner on the lines of the dictionaries of the Western countries, especially English dictionary."

"The dictionary compiled by Rev. F. Kittel contained 70,000 words. On the literary side, it is a treasure of knowledge. Thus, Rev. F. Kittel may be called the father of Kannada dictionary. If he had not taken up and accomplished such a stupendous task in the 19th century, the present Kannada-English dictionary compiled by Kannada Sahitya Parishat would have taken another century to come into existence."

"The coastal belt of Karnataka has about half-a-dozen dialects of Kannada like Havyaka , Kota, Gauda, Halakki, etc."

"The term Kannada, the Canarese of European writers, is formed from Karnadu, the black cultivated country, referring to the black soil, commonly called cotton soil, which characterizes the plateau of the Southern Dekkan. In the Sanskrit language the term appears as Karanata and KarnKannada is the appellation of the Canarese country and its language."

"Kannada is spoken throughout Mysore, the Southern Mahratta country, in some of the western districts of the Nijam's territory and partly in north Canara on the western coast."

"The earliest written documents of the Kannada language are inscriptions on walls and pillars of temples, on detached stone-tablets and monumental stones, and on copper-plates of the Canarese country. The inscriptions are often dated; if they have no date, the form of the letters used and historical references to dated inscriptions serve to ascertain their age."

"As regards the forms of the Old and Modern Kannada alphabets, they are varieties of the so-called Cave-character, an alphabet which was used for the inscriptions in the cave hermitages of Buddhists in India, and rests on the Southern Ashoka character. This character was about 250 BC employed in the edicts of Buddhist King Ashoka. Different forms of the letters used for the Kannada inscriptions appear at different periods, the earliest form differing in the greatest degree from those of the modern Kannada alphabet. At the time of the composition of the Basavapurana 1369 A. D. the old alphabet had become already out of use, as the author of that work mentions the letters of Old Kannada as belonging to the past."

"The Kannada language in the old inscriptions of which specimens exist that belong to about 600 AD, is not the same as that of the present day; it is what is called Old Canarese. The Old Canarese is also the language of the early Kannada authors or the literary style. It may be said to have continued in use to the middle of the 13th century, when by degrees the language of the inscriptions and literary compositions begins to evince a tendency to become Modern Canarese or the popular and colloquial dialect of the present time."

"The grammatical treatises on Kannada were constructed on the Samskrita plan. Their Jaina authors took Panini d others as their guides. The earliest grammarian, whose works have come down to us, is N'agavarma who appears to belong to the first half of the 12th century."

"The ancient Kannada grammarians held the study of grammar in high esteem, as may be learned from the following words of the author of the Sabdaamnidarpana: " Through grammar (correct) words originate, through the words of that grammar meaning the beholding of truth the desired final beatitude."

"Perhaps being the oldest language next to Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil, Kannada country and language have a rich heritage. 'Kavirajamarga' of king Nripatunga (9th century A.D.) is believed to be the earliest literary work in Kannada. It is a treatise on poetics or a guide to poets indicating that Kannada was a fully developed literary language....from epigraphical evidence it can be surmised that the spoken Kannada language evolved much earlier than the Halmidi inscription (c. 450 A.D. ). Belonging to the Prto-Dravidian group it has close affinity with the Tamil language, prevalent now in the neighboring Tamil Nadu. But the language of the Halmidi inscription is highly Sanskritized."

"By the 10th century Kannada had its greatest ancient poets like Pampa (born 902 A.D.), Ranna (born 949 A.D.) and special prose work like Waddaradhane (c. 930 A.D.) indicating that classical Kannada literature had fully evolved at least one or two centuries earlier, back to 'Kavirajamarga'. But since none of the earlier works have survived, we have to stick to the established norm that written Kannada came into vogue by the 5th century A.D."

"The pundits have divided the development of Kannada language into three phases; The Old Kannada Phase, The Middle Kannada Phase, and The Modern Kannada Phase."

"Most of the works in literature and secular sciences mentioned in reference books like Kavirajamarga are still not to be traced. But works of later centuries mention now extinct works on various topics. Thus, Chudamani (a 96,000 verse-measures), a commentary on logic (Tatwarthamahashastra) by Tambulacharya belonged to the 7th century."

"The rock stone inscription of Badami in archaic Kannada letters is ascribed to the 7th century. The three liner Tripadi (which by itself is as old as the Gayatri Mantra) type of literature was later popularized by the poet Sarvajna in his 'Vachanas'."

"'Desi' and 'Marga' styles of native Kannada and then others influenced by Sanskrit had become demarcated clearly by then, and Pampa prided over assimilating both styles in his two great epics Adipurana and Vikramarjuna Vijaya or simply known as Pampa Bharata."

"'Vaddaradhane' is the earliest prose work in Kannada. Some ascribe it to the 9th century. But from the linguistic form and the depiction of the existing society, most scholars agree to its belonging to the early 10th century."

"The language is suited to narrate stories and presents a well developed word form, idiom, structure, and texture indicating that Kannada was a full-fledged language for prose and poetry by the 10th century."

"Apart from written works, the inscriptions of the period illustrate many variations of meters and structural variety. The hero-stone of Manalera's dog Kali (943 A.D.), the details of the pologame of Rashtrakuta, on king Indra IV. The heroic fight of Nolambaraditya provide moving descriptions attesting the fact that well known poets were asked to compose epitaphs befitting the occasion. These inscriptions are a wealth of information for historical data, cultural life and study of Kannada language and literature of early times."

"The Greek dramatists of the 4th century B.C., particularly Euripides and Aristophanes, appear to have been familiar with the Kannada country and the Kannada language, and had actually used Kannada phrases and expressions in the dialogues of their characters. This shows a far more intimate contact of the Greeks with Kannada Indian culture than with Indian Culture elsewhere."

"Kannada-Tamil literature, especially Kannada literature, is the key to the successive development of the literary and cultural, as well as the spiritual history of India. For we find, on the basis of Kannada literature mainly, that the course of India's religious, literary, cultural and national evolution can conveniently be divided into successive slabs of: (a) Pre-Buddhistic, (b) Buddhistic, (c) Jain, (d) Saivite, (e) Vaishnavite, (f) Late Hindu and lastly (g) the Modern periods. This succession is clearly shown in the history of Kannada literature, though the first two slabs, the Pre-Buddhistic and the Buddhistic are lost to us in Kannada and are available only in Tamil and in Sanskrit."

"Makar Sankranti (January 14) is a festival held across India, under a variety of names, to honor the god of the sun, Surya. Though often relegated to a secondary position relative to the three prominent Hindu deities — Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Surya was a key figure in the ancient Hindu texts, the Vedas, and is the subject of the most repeated texts of Hindu liturgy, the Gayatri Mantra."

"Makar Sankranti heralds the end of winter and the arrival of spring throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Through the next six months, called the Uttarayana period, the days will become longer and warmer, and the whole period is considered an auspicious time. The day is also tied to the just-celebrated Bhishma Astami, which remembered the death of the hero Bhishma from the ancient Hindu epic the Mahabharata, who chose to die just as the Uttrayana period began."

"Makar Sankranti is observed in the month of Magha as the sun enters Capricorn on or near January 14 on the Common Era calendar. It is also celebrated as Uttarayana Punyakala Makara Sankranti (in Karnataka), Uttarayana Punyakalam Pongal (in Tamil Nadu), and Pedda Panduga (in Andhra Pradesh)."

"A variety of stories are told of Surya, which have implications for observance of this day(s). The sun god, for example, had a number of children, among them the Lord Shani, one the nine primary celestial beings in Hindu astrology; Shani is identified with planet Saturn. When Shanti was born, it is said, an eclipse of the sun occurred. It is also said that Surya and Shani have their differences, but always on Makara Sankranthi, Surya visits with Shani- thus fathers should visit their sons. Food, especially sweets, will be prepared using til sesame seed oil), which is valued for its stickiness or binding quality. Thus, the sweets that people will give those close to them are a symbol of being bound together, whatever differences might arise."

"Makar Sankranti is also fraught with implications for the early phases of the agricultural cycle. It is a time to pray for a prosperous growing season and a good future harvest, and a time to bathe one's cows, so essential to all aspects of agricultural production.It is a time to remember [[ancestors and, in the evenings, to celebrate around bonfires."

"The largest gathering for Makar Sankranti is on Sager Island in West Bengal at the point the Hooghly River, a branch of the Ganges as it spreads out approaching the Indian Ocean and meets the Bay of Bengal. Each January, several hundred thousand pilgrims gather on the island for the beginning of spring. Makar Sankranti occurs in the middle of the lengthy"

"Kite flying has become a popular activity in India, and for the more secular minded, it has become the dominant aspect of this day. The city of Delhi holds an annual Kite Flying Day festival on January 14, and the celebration has spread across the country."

"On January 14 every year, Makar Sankranti, is the only Indian festival celebrated on a fixed calendric day of the solar calendar."

"Makar Sankranti is unique as it goes entirely by the solar calendar. The clue to this mystery lies in the fact that Makar Sankranti is also called Uttarayan, or the day on which the sun begins its northward journey."

"January 14 is the day on which the sun begins to rise in the Makara Rashi, Sankranti meaning entering."

"While the exact day on which the winter or summer solstice occurs remains steady (within one day error), there is a slight change in the way the Earth's rotation axis is aligned to the sun. Hence, over a period of a few hundred years, this drift means that even though the sun begins its Uttarayan on December 21, it is not in the Makara rashi as it was about 1,500 years ago. So, 1,500 years ago, during the time of Aryabhata, the Uttarayan and Makar Sankranti coincided. Now Makar Sankranti comes on January 14, but Uttarayan happens on Dhanu Sankranti!"

"So what day to celebrate? Well, if you want to celebrate Uttarayan, do it on December 21, but if you want to celebrate Makar Sankranti, January 14 is about right. Incidentally, it also means that winter, which is at its peak in January and February, used to be at its peak in February and March at the time of Aryabhata."

"In India with the new year comes the festival of Makar Sankranti, a festival celebrated by Hindus. Makar Sankranti falls on the day of the year when the sun, the king of all planets, is in the rasi (house) of Makar (Capricorn). This is considered to be the most holy festival of the year. Makar Sankranti always falls on January 14. According to the Hindu calendar, it is celebrated in the month of Magha."

"The day begins with a bath in a river or tank, when water is offered to the Sun god. The rivers and tanks are often crowded with people eager to have a bath. An important aspect of Makar Sankranti is giving charity. It is believed that people who perform charitable deeds earn a place in heaven."

"In the west of India, in the state of Maharashtra, sweets made of sesame are exchanged. In Gujarat, kite-flying competitions take place. The sky is flooded with brightly- coloured kites."

"In South India, crops are harvested around this time and w:PongalPongal is celebrated."

"In North India, apart from Makar Sankranti, Lohri is also celebrated around this time. It falls on 13th January. Primarily is celebrated in Punjab, it is a harvest festival."

"Huge bonfires are lit in the evening and sweets and puffed rice are offered to the fire. People sing and dance around the fire to the beat of dholak (drum). The men dance the bhangra dance while the women dance the gidda."

"In the familiar milieu of the Tamil land, where musicians and devotees can sing and proclaim about the Lord who is wonderfully auspicious, the Srivaisnava uses Tamil, the language that he is most accustomed to."

"Sri Aurobindo’s study of Tamil, which he did with the help ;of Subramania Bharati, led him to discover that the “original connection between the Sanskrit and Tamil tongues” was “far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed” and that they were “two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue.” The artificial division between Indo-European and Dravidian languages had gone: “My first study of Tamil words had brought me to what seemed a clue to the very origins and structure of the ancient Sanskrit tongue.”"

"In...the cultural milieu, however, Sanskrit has greater prestige than Tamil. It is the language of revelation (sruti), of the eternal Veda."

"The bhakti movement began in South India about the sixth century AD when several saints wandered from temple to temple singing the praise of Vishnu or Shiva. The twelve devotees of Vishnu who are recognized as poet-saints by the Srlvaisnava community were called the alvars and the sixty-three devotees of Siva were known as nayanmars. Tirumankai alvar and NammaWar wrote over half of the four thousand verses [in Tamil language] that forms the Divya Prabandham or Sacred Collect for the Srlvaisnava community."

"For the first time within Hinduism, devotion was expressed in a mother tongue, a language --- continuous with the language of one’s earliest childhood and family, once folk and folklore. Unlike Sanskrit, it was a spoken language, associated with powerful emotions, and the deity of the Tamil hymns was brought close to the worshipped by the language fraught with tender words used for beloved ones."

"In actual life, it is impossible to separate us into two nations. We are not two nations. Every Moslem will have a Hindu name if he goes back far enough in his family history. Every Moslem is merely a Hindu who has accepted Islam. That does not create nationality. … We in India have a common culture. In the North, Hindi and Urdu are understood by both Hindus and Moslems. In Madras, Hindus and Moslems speak Tamil, and in Bengal, they both speak Bengali and neither Hindi nor Urdu. When communal riots take place, they are always provoked by incidents over cows and by religious processions. That means that it is our superstitions that create the trouble and not our separate nationalities."

"The history of publishing and printing in Tamil is as interesting and rich as the language itself. The first book [Tamil] dates back to 20 October 1578. On the eventful day, Portuguese missionary Henrique Henriques (also Anrique Anriquez) published ‘Thambiraan Vanakkam' with paper imported from China."

"From its inception, Tamil devotion meant that speakers of Tamil had to be at the service of the language, to labor in its name and on its behalf. Glossed in devotional narratives as tamiḻppaṇi, “Tamil work,” or tamiḻttoṇṭu, “Tamil service,” this labor is presented as honorable, virtuous, and meritorious. It is mandatory for all those who claim to be Tamilians for it is an obligation (kaṭamai), even a debt (kaṭaṉ), that they owe, by virtue of being speakers of Tamil, to their language."

"Dravidianism, too, lent its support to the contestatory classicist project, motivated principally by the political imperative of countering (Sanskritic) Indian nationalism.... It was not until the DMK came to power in 1967 that such demands were fulfilled, and the pure Tamil cause received a boost, although purification efforts are not particularly high on the agenda of either the Dravidian movement or the Dravidianist idiom of tamiḻppaṟṟu."

"...considering most of the consequences of the rediscovery of classical Tamil literary and cultural heritage, we feel we are entitled to characterize these consequences as the Tamil renaissance; that is, compared with the general cultural and even ... imaginative and erudite literature before roughly 1850, the Tamil linguistic and cultural scene exhibited unmistakable signs of vigorous revival."

"Literature in all Dravidian languages owes a great deal to Sanskrit, the magic wand whose touch raised each of the languages from a level of patois to that of a literary idiom."

"The dating of Sangam literature and the identification of its language with Old Tamil have recently been questioned by Herman Tieken who argues that the works are better understood as 9th century Pāṇṭiyan dynasty compositions, deliberately written in an archaising style to make them seem older than they were. Tieken's dating has, however, been criticised by reviewers of his work."

"In 2004 Tamil was declared a classical language of India, meaning that it met three criteria: its origins are ancient; it has an independent tradition; and it possesses a considerable body of ancient literature. In the early 21st century more than 66 million people were Tamil speakers."

"The earliest Tamil writing is attested in inscriptions and potsherds from the 5th century BCE. Three periods have been distinguished through analyses of grammatical and lexical changes: Old Tamil (from about 450 BCE to 700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600), and Modern Tamil (from 1600)."

"The Tamil writing system evolved from the Brahmi script. The shape of the letters changed enormously over time, eventually stabilizing when printing was introduced in the 16th century CE. The major addition to the alphabet was the incorporation of Grantha letters to write unassimilated Sanskrit words, although a few letters with irregular shapes were standardized during the modern period. A script known as Vatteluttu (“Round Script”) is also in common use."

"Spoken Tamil has changed substantially over time, including changes in the phonological structure of words. This has created diglossia—a system in which there are distinct differences between colloquial forms of a language and those that are used in formal and written contexts. The major regional variation is between the form spoken in India and that spoken in Jaffna (Sri Lanka), capital of a former Tamil city-state, and its surrounds."

"Within Tamil Nadu there are phonological differences between the northern, western, and southern speech. Regional varieties of the language intersect with varieties that are based on social class or caste."

"Like the other Dravidian languages, Tamil is characterized by a series of retroflex consonants (/ḍ/, /ṇ/, and /ṭ/) made by curling the tip of the tongue back to the roof of the mouth. Structurally, Tamil is a verb-final language that allows flexibility regarding the order of the subject and the object in a sentence. Adjectives and relative, adverbial, and infinitive clauses normally precede the term they modify, while inflections such as those for tense, number, person, and case are indicated with suffixes."

"The land of Tamil speech and people was in ancient times ruled by three famous lines of king, the Chera, Chola], and Pandiya. The land ruled by them was called Chera Nadu (Chera country), Chola Nadu (Chola country), and Pandiya Nadu (Pandiaya country) respectively."

"Tamils are of Dravidian origin. Many historians claim that the Dravidians, before the dawn of the history of the Tamils, were spread all over India. For various reasons they split into small groups. Consequently, the original language also split into different languages. Tamil is found to have retained about 80 per cent of the features of the original Dravidian language."

"There are three major sub-groups in the Dravidian family of language, namely, South Dravidian, Central Dravidian, and North Dravidian"

"The Tamil literature may broadly be classified into:(i) Sangam Classics; (ii) Bhakthi or Devotional Literature;(iii) Ethics, and (iv) Modern Literature."

"The early Tamil literatures are called [w:Sangam literature|Sangam Classics]]. Though there are controversies over the time of the Classics, generally the period between 200 BCE and 500 CE is considered the period of Sangam. Sangam Classics are mostly descriptive."

"Many of the poems [in Tamil] seem to belong to the post-Sangham Age. It is widely accepted that among these, Thirukkural was composed before the second century CE. The Thirukkural consists of 1330 Kural, which are short verses of seven words. Thiruvalluvar is the author of this book."

"The famous Tamil work Silappathikaram belongs to the later Sangam period. w:Ilango AdigalSaint Ilango, a Chera prince, wrote this epic. Silappathikaram is the story of a chaste woman, Kannaki."

"Bhakti literature deals with religious philosophy, the history of saints, etc. Most of these are devotional poems. Religious teaching entered Tamil literature for the first time in Manimekalai. Sathanar the author of this book believed in Buddhism. The philosophy of Buddha is extensively discussed in Manimekalai."

"Modern literature must be dealt with under two sub-headings: (1) Prose and (2) Poetry. It may be noted that prose writings have gained more popularity in this century. Prose style is chosen as a better medium for novels, short stories, essays, etc."

"In general, grammar includes phonology, morphology and syntax. But Classical Tamil tradition seems to differ from this. The earliest grammar Tholkappiyam deals not only with phonology, morphology and syntax but also with personal and impersonal, internal and external dialects of life, beauty of literature, behavioral dialects of human life, Tamil linguistic traditions, etc., and this portion is termed Porulathikaram."

"According to the tradition that Tholkappiyar followed a grammar is three fold: (1) Ezhuthu (sounds and letters), (2) Col (words), (3) Porul (meaning). Later it was five fold: (1) Ezhuthu, (2) Col, (3) Porul, (4) Yappu (versification), and (5) Ani (beauty of literature)."

"Works dealing exclusively with the science of music were written during the Sangam period, but were lost long ago. The Silappthikaram of the second century AD throws flood of light on the music of the Tamils. Music in Tamil nomenclature is isai. They had five kinds of Pans (specific melody type), namely Mullai, Kurinji, Marudham, Neythal and Palai. Apart from this, they had seven musical notes, viz., Kural, Thuttam, Kaykkilai, Uzhai, Ili, Vilari and Tharam."

"There is a wide gap between spoken and written Tamil. Spoken Tamil is used for face-to-face communication or in informal occasions whereas written Tamil is used during official speeches and other formal occasions. Spoken Tamil is not generally written; thus, while writing, the written form is invariably used. While there is a wide gap between the two forms of Tamil, there are certain rules the use of that help the learner to derive one form of language from another."

"There are number of universities in India and Sri Lanka which have facilities for Tamil Studies."

"Tamil, a language with a long and ancient literary tradition, has been spoken in southern India for several millennia."

"Tamil is a member of the Dravidian family, whose members are nearly all spoken in southern India. Other relatives are Telugu (spoken in south central India to the east coast), Malayalam (in Kerala State on the Malabar Coast of southwest India), Kannada (in Mysore, a region of southern India), Brahui (in southern Pakistan), and several other less well-known languages."

"Tamil linguistic variation cross classifies through three dimensions: geography, caste, and diglossia. Six regional dialects can be classified as: East, West, North, South, Central, and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanken Tamil is relatively conservative, having retained older features while continental dialects have lost them or changed in different directions. Caste dialects mostly distinguish between Brahmin and non-Brahmin varieties. Overlaying all of this are diglossic variants."

"The high status non-Brahmin dialect--which is spoken in the Central dialect area, including the cities of Tanjore, Tirichirapalli and Madurai--is apparently gaining ground as a standard language."

"Tamil is written in an alpha-syllabic system like that of other South Asian languages. It derives from the Ashokan Brahmi script. Vowels have two forms, once used at the beginning of a word, another used following consonant symbols. Each consonant graph symbolizes the consonant plus following vowel "a". When another vowel symbol is used the "a" vowel is suppressed. Consonant symbols with a diacritic are used to represent just the consonant itself."

"Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinating language in which morphemes are transparently separable and analyzable affixes which are attached to roots or stems; such affixes in Tamil are nearly always suffixal. Words are made up of lexical roots, or stems (roots that have been expanded by a derivational suffix), followed by inflectional suffix(es) which mark such categories as, for example, person, number, mood, tense, etc."

"Nouns, a broad classification in Tamil grammatical terminology, include common and proper nouns, numerals, pronouns and some so-called adjectives; they inflect for case, person, number (singular and plural), and gender. There are two genders which are based on the referent's natural gender and correspond roughly to the distinction human/nonhuman; they are called "rational" (e.g., nouns referring to men, deities, women in some dialects) and "irrational" (e.g., women in some dialects, children, animals) respectively. There are 8 cases (nominative, accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative)."

"Modern Tamil has no articles; definiteness and indefiniteness are signaled by other grammatical devices, such as the number "one," used as an indefinite article. Compound nouns are used as deictic pronouns (demonstratives), which are used to indicate objects close by, at a distance, and a kind of neutral; Sri Lankan Tamil has a fourth indicating medial distance."

"Verbs are formally inflected principally for mood and tense by a grammatical particle suffixed to the stem. Most verbs also mark affective and effective "voice" (not equivalent to the notions "transitivity" or "causation") where the former indicates that the subject undergoes the action named by the stem, and the latter signals that the subject directs the action of the stem. Mood is also marked implicitly by grammatical formatives which also mark tense categories. These signal that the verbal event is, for example, unreal, possible, potential, or a real, and actual. There are three simple tenses (past, present, and future), and a series of perfects."

"Word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) and even though case and post positions are used to mark grammatical relations, word order is not completely free as it might be in similarly structured languages. Even where variation is allowed the verb in simple sentences must always come to the far right of the sentence."

"Tamil has a verbal category called "attitude" which is used to indicate the speaker's state of mind and subjective attitude about the narrated event. Verb auxiliaries are used for this purpose; examples of affected states projected are: pejorative opinion, antipathy, relief that a unpleasant event has ended, undesirability about the result of an event, and so on."

"Besides loans from Sanskrit, and some borrowing from Persian and Arabic, English in modern times has supplied a lot of loan words, but because of the emphasis on linguistic purism in Tamil grammatical tradition loans are assimilated to the phonological system."

"All Tamil speakers, including the uneducated, use two varieties of the language which only roughly correspond to the difference between literary and spoken Tamil. A high status variety is used in most writing, the media--including radio and television broadcasts--political speeches and other similar occasions. In contrast, a low status variety is used in every day discourse and conversations. It is also used in film and some authors of fiction use the variety as do some politicians and lecturers to create solidarity, or enhance intimacy, with their audiences."

"In both India and Sri Lanka, Tamil has the status of an official language. In India it is one of fourteen official languages, and in Sri Lanka it shares that status with Sinhalese. It is the first official language of India's Tamil Nadu state."

"Among the four ancient literary languages of southern India (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu) Tamil has the longest tradition. The earliest records date from inscriptions from 200 BC. Other early works exist which were preserved on manuscripts made by palm-leaf and through oral transmission. Part of this rich and varied literary output includes a Tamil indigenous grammatical tradition independent of that of the ancient Sanskrit grammarians. The earliest text which describes the language of the classical period is the Tolkappiyam (dating from around 200 BC); another dates from the year 1000."

"Three stages appear in the written records: ancient (200 BC to 700), medieval (700 - 1500) and modern (1500 to the present). Sometime between 800 and the turn of the millennium, Malayalam, a very closely related Dravidian language, split off and became a distinct language."

"During the medieval period Tamil absorbed many loan words from Sanskrit in the verbal system, but in the 1900s attempts were made to purge Tamil of its Sanskrit loans with the result that modern scientific and bureaucratic terminology is Tamil-based and not Sanskrit-based as in other Indic languages."

"Tamilism is an Ancient and Ethnic Religion of Tamil people. It denotes the religious traditions and practices of Tamil people and also know as Tamil Religion."

"Tamilism - popularly known as Tamil matham ('the Tamil religion')"

"By encouraging ethnic communities to re-enact and re-experience concentrated versions of a particular ethnic identity in a public (and even ritualistic) manner, tamil religious festivals such as mentioned above exemplify the form of "Tamilism""

"During 1800s The Nayak Hindu Brahmins dominated the villages and Tamil Religion was Forbidden"

"The emotional and sensual character of popular Tamil religion in particular the ecstatic union with various deities which had long existed within the indigenous south Indian Folk Religion"

"The Tamil Nationalism Movement had a specifically shaiva component that fostered the idea that Siddhantam preceded all other as the original Tamil Religion"

"Tamil Religion(Tamilism): Siddantham is the true and Original Philosophy of Tamilians who are not Brahmins"

"Urdu is a common denominator. It is the national language (national language of Pakistan). People in all the provinces of Pakistan speak Urdu."

"In this catalogue of new demands there are some which on the face of them are extravagant and impossible, if not irresponsible. As an instance, one may refer to the demand for fifty-fifty and the demand for the recognition of Urdu as the national language of India. ... Their claim for the recognition of Urdu as the national language of India is equally extravagant. Urdu is not only not spoken all, over India but is not even the language of all the Musalmans of India. Of the 68 millions of Muslims, only 28 millions speak Urdu. The proposal of making Urdu the national language means that the language of 28 millions of Muslims is to be imposed particularly upon 40 millions of Musalmans or generally upon 322 millions of Indians."

"“The poets of Delhi, proud of the ‘pure’ Urdu of the imperial camp… rejected the Dakani principle and practice of borrowing extensively from the Indian languages, especially if these borrowings were related to Hindu religion, culture and world-view… In this process imagery was drawn exclusively from Persian precedents, i.e., from the unseen and unexperienced sights, sounds and smells of Persia and Central Asia, rejecting totally the Indian sights, sounds and sensuous experience as materials regarded not sublime enough for poetic expression… It was a desperate unconscious clinging to the origins of the symbols of Muslim India’s cultural experience which had begun abroad, and an instinctive fear of being submerged into the Hindu cultural milieu. These modes of aesthetic appreciation, rooted so deeply in the essence of universal Islamic culture, remained more or less incomprehensible to the Hindu mind."

"The very word Urdu came into being as the original Lashkari dialect, in other words, the language of the army."

"“Throughout the whole range of Urdu literature in its first phase… the atmosphere of this literature is provokingly un-Indian - it is that of Persia. Early Urdu poets never so much as mention the great physical features of India - its Himalayas, its rivers like the Ganges, the Jamuna, the Sindhu, the Godavari, etc; but of course mountains and streams of Persia, and rivers of Central Asia are always there. Indian flowers, Indian plants are unknown; only Persian flowers and plants which the poet could see only in a garden. There was a deliberate shutting of the eye to everything Indian, to everything not mentioned or treated in Persian poetry… A language and literature which came to base itself upon an ideology which denied on the Indian soil the very existence of India and Indian culture, could not but be met with a challenge from some of the Indian adherents of their national culture; and that challenge was in the form of highly Sanskritized Hindi’.”"

"In actual life, it is impossible to separate us into two nations. We are not two nations. Every Moslem will have a Hindu name if he goes back far enough in his family history. Every Moslem is merely a Hindu who has accepted Islam. That does not create nationality. … We in India have a common culture. In the North, Hindi and Urdu are understood by both Hindus and Moslems. In Madras, Hindus and Moslems speak Tamil, and in Bengal, they both speak Bengali and neither Hindi nor Urdu. When communal riots take place, they are always provoked by incidents over cows and by religious processions. That means that it is our superstitions that create the trouble and not our separate nationalities."

"Islamism immediately revived the lost cause of Urdu behind the smoke-screen of this Communist campaign against Hindi. It lauded loudly when progressive Urdu poets like Firaq Gorakhpuri lampooned Hindi in a language which was largely unprintable. Simultaneously, Islamism started parading Urdu as the great language of culture and refinement which will be lost to India for good if Urdu was allowed to go under. No Communist came forward to examine this “culture and refinement as a legacy of decadent Muslim courts and a frivolous Muslim aristocracy. No Communist questioned the heavy Persianisation and Arabicisation of Urdu which made it incomprehensible even to educated people, leave alone the man in Chandni Chowk. The recognition of Urdu as a second language has today become a sine qua non of Secularism."

"Let me make it very clear to you, it is no doubt that the state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Anyone who tries to mislead you is really the enemy of Pakistan. Without state language, no nation can remain tied up solidly together and function. Look at the history of every government judgement substitute language. Therefore, so far as the State language is concerned, Pakistan's state language shall be Urdu."

"Urdu begins, as matter of commonsense have begun, as soon as the Ghaznavi armies got to Lahore in 1027 -and Lahore was nowhere near the area of Khari (and still less of Braj and Adhvani)"

"A word from Urdu will be seen intruding into Hindi like a crow among swans, at one place, while at another, a Hindi word in the midst of Urdu will ruin the flavor like salt in a sweet dish."

"It is equally important to know that Urdu poetry came under the influence of Persian poetry at a time when the latter had fallen into decadence. The result was that our poetry was tainted with narrowness and artificiality at the very outset of its career. ... Urdu poetry lacks freshness because, among other things presently to be discussed, it leaves out observation and borrows its imagery wholesale from Persia. From this it naturally follows that our medieval poetry, especially the gha^al^ has no local colour. In this respect, the contrast between Urdu poetry and Hindi and Punjabi and Sanskrit poetry is striking. The latter have grown out of the soil and absorbed its natural wealth and social background. And for this reason they make a deeper ap- peal to us than Urdu poetry. One of the most unfailing sources of aesthetic enjoyment in poetry lies in the idealization and recognition in it of things we see and love in life. It is not only that the sights and scenes we are familiar with come crowding to the mind when des- cribed in poetry and make the poetic experience richer and more significant. By far the greatest function of poetry, as I take it, is to send us back to life with an increased zest for it: it is a training for a fuller and more significant life. Your heart will not dance with the daffodils unless you have seen them disporting in the air, like Words- worth; and if you have seen them under the lead of the poet’s imagination, then your observation of them in future will acquire associations which it did not have before. In this respect the poverty of Urdu poetry is too palpable to require further comment."

"Although Urdu in form of Zuban-I Urdu-yi Mu'lla was already in use during the reign of Emperor Shajahan and referred to as Lashkari Zaban, Muhammed Shah made it popular among his people, declaring it to be his Court Language. In his respect, Lashkari or Urdu replaced Farsi or Persian, which was being used and understood by fewer and fewer individuals."

"Urdu literary culture from the late eighteenth century on- ward does place an unfortunate stress, which is also entirely disproportion- ate to their value, on “purism,” “language reform,” “purging the language of undesirable usages,” and—worst of all—privileging all Persian-Arabic over all Urdu. Urdu is the only language whose writers have prided themselves on “deleting” or “excising” words and phrases from their active vocabulary. Instead of taking pride in the enlargement of vocabulary, they took joy in limiting the horizon of language, to the extent of banishing many words used even by literate speakers or their own ustads."

"After he (Abdul Haq) migrated to Pakistan, he said, at a meeting in Karachi held to celebrate the 92nd birth anniversary of Ghalib on 15 February 1961, something quite different —as this short extract from the press report appearing in the official fortnightly bulletin of the Anjuman Taraqqui-e-Urdu (Pakistan) shows: In his presidential speech Baba-e-Urdu [Abdul Haq) expressing his unhappiness over the disregard shown to Urdu in Pakistan said that Pakistan was not created by Jinnah, nor was it created by Iqbal; it was Urdu that created Pakistan. The fundamental reason for the discord between the Hindus and the Muslims was the Urdu language. The entire two-nation theory and all other differences of this nature issued solely from Urdu. Therefore, Pakistan owes a debt of gratitude to Urdu. Coming from the father of the Urdu Movement this was a stunning revelation."

"In fact this mixture of locals and foreigners gave birth to the language later known as "Urdu" in Lahore that was called Lashkari Zaban (language of the army) at that time."

"In his diary, Hsuan Tsang has recorded that India was divided into five divisions or to use his language, there were ‘five Indies': (1) Northern India, (2) Western India, (3) Central India, (4) Eastern India and (5) Southern India and that these five divisions contained 80 kingdoms.... It is true that when Hsuan Tsang came, not only the Punjab but what is now Afghanistan was part of India and further, the people of the Punjab and Afghanistan were either Vedic or Buddhist by religion."

"The age in which true history appeared in India was one of great intellectual and spiritual ferment. Mystics and sophists of all kinds roamed through the Ganga Valley, all advocating some form of mental discipline and asceticism as a means to salvation; but the age of the Buddha, when many of the best minds were abandoning their homes and professions for a life of asceticism, was also a time of advance in commerce and politics. It produced not only philosophers and ascetics, but also merchant princes and men of action."

"“At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft, her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilisation were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra. No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants…There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilisation is its humanity.” (pp.8-9)]."

"Historians usually focus their attention on the past of countries that still exist, writing hundreds and thousands of books on British history, French history, German history, Russian history, American history, Chinese history, Indian history, Brazilian history or whatever. Whether consciously or not, they are seeking the roots of the present, thereby putting themselves in danger of reading history backwards. As soon as great powers arise, whether the United States in the twentieth century or China in the twenty-first, the call goes out for offerings on American History or Chinese History, and siren voices sing that today’s important countries are also those whose past is most deserving of examination, that a more comprehensive spectrum of historical knowledge can be safely ignored."

"Nothing should more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and inadequacy of his acquaintance with India. Here is... an impressive continuity of development and civilization from Mohenjo-daro, 2900 B.C. or earlier, to Gandhi, Raman and Tagore; faiths compassing every stage from barbarous idolatry to the most subtle and spiritual pantheism; philosophers playing a thousand variations on one monistic theme from the Upanishads eight centuries before Christ to Shankara eight centuries after him; scientists developing astronomy three thousand years ago, and winning Nobel prizes in our own time; a democratic constitution of untraceable antiquity in the villages, and wise and beneficent rulers like Ashoka and Akbar in the capitals; minstrels singing great epics almost as old as Homer, and poets holding world audiences today; artists raising gigantic temples for Hindu gods from Tibet to Ceylon and from Cambodia to Java, or carving perfect palaces by the score for Mogul kings and queens—this is the India that patient scholarship is now opening up, like a new intellectual continent, to that Western mind which only yesterday thought civilization an exclusively European thing.” ... We cannot tell yet whether, as Marshall believes, Mohenjo-daro represents the oldest of all civilizations known. But the exhuming of prehistoric India has just begun; only in our time has archeology turned from Egypt across Mesopotamia to India. When the soil of India has been turned up like that of Egypt we shall probably find there a civilization older than that which flowered out of the mud of the Nile."

"In the present context, the link between history-writing and actual politics is extra-ordinarily strong. Witness the crucial role of the Aryan invasions theory in the secularist and casteist/Ambedkarist ideologies, as earlier in the missionary and colonial ideologies. In fact, I can not think of any situation in world history where history-writing was so intertwined with both long- term political philosophy and short-term political equations. This is partly because an unusually large chunk of India's history is fundamentally under debate, either because it has not yet been mapped (so many unknowns may be decided on overnight once the Indus script is conclusively deciphered), or because it has been questioned for ideological reasons even while well-established (like the denial of Islam's utterly destructive role). Nowhere else can so much be read into history according to one's ideological compulsions, because nowhere else is so much history so undecided and disputed."

"The history of modern India tells us a complex, surprising, captivating, and yet unconcluded story of freedom. It is appropriate to express a Tocquevillesque astonishment at this historical phenomenon. If we look from age to age, from the earliest antiquity to the present day, we can agree with Tocqueville that nothing like this has ever happened before. We have not yet seen the end of this unprecedented historical process… For, the eventual shape of the destination of this process might be unclear, but the movement towards a greater expansion of freedom is irreversible."

"The effort to read the problem of India in the set terms of Marxism is rather an exercise in ingenuity than a serious intellectual contribution to socialist advance."

"History is the one weak spot in Indian Literature. It is, in fact, non-existent."

"Indians of old were keenly alive to the expansion of dominions, acquisition of wealth, and the development of trade, industry and commerce. The material prosperity they gained in these various ways was reflected in the luxury and elegance that characterized the society... The adventurous spirit of the Indians carried them even as far as the North Sea, while their caravans traveled from one end of Asia to the other."

"Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. The question, therefore, is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton.” England had to fulfill a double mission in India: One destructive, and the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia. Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moguls, who had successively overrun India, soon became Hinduised, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, themselves conquered by the superior civilization of their subjects. [According to him the British were the first conquerors who were superior, and therefore inaccessible to Hindu civilization. They destroyed it by breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by levelling all that was great and elevated in the native society. The historic pages of their rule in India, report hardly anything beyond that destruction.] “The work of regeneration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins. Nevertheless, it has begun."

"India could not escape the fate of being conquered [by England], and the whole of her past history, if it be anything, is the history of the successive conquests she has undergone. Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society."

"The history of India is not the story of how she underwent foreign invasions, but how she resisted them and eventually triumphed over them.... To be a history in the true sense...the work must be the story of the people inhabiting a country. It must be a record of their life from age to age presented through the life and achievements of men whose exploits become the beacon lights of tradition...the central purpose of a history must...be to investigate and unfold the values which age after age have inspired the inhabitants of a country to develop their collective will...such a history of India is still to be written. ... I had long felt the inadequacy of our so called Indian histories...for many years, I was planning an elaborate history of India in order... that the world might catch a glimpse of her soul as Indians see it."

"To be a history in the true sense of the word, the work must be the story of the people inhabiting a country. It must be a record of their life from age to age presented through the life and achievements of men whose exploits become the beacon-lights of tradition; through the characteristic reaction of the people to physical and economic conditions; through political changes and vicissitudes which create the forces and conditions which operate upon life; through characteristic social institutions, beliefs and forms; through literary and artistic achievements; through the movements of thought which from time to time helped or hindered the growth of collective harmony; through those values which the people have accepted or reacted to and which created or shaped their collective will; through efforts of the people to will themselves into an organic unity. The central purpose of a history must, therefore, be to investigate and unfold the values which, age after age, have inspired the inhabitants of a country to develop their collective will and to express it through the manifold activities of their life. Such a history of India is still to be written."

"It is like reading of a land periodically devastated by hordes of lemmings or locusts; it is like turning from the history of a coral reef, in which every act and every death is a foundation, to the depressing chronicle of a succession of castles built on the waste sand of the sea-shore. This is Woodruff on the difference between European history and Indian history. He has chosen his images well. But the sandcastle is not quite exact. The sandcastle is flattened by the tide and leaves not trace, and India is above all the land of ruins."

"I can see how what I said then could be misinterpreted. I was talking about history, I was talking about a historical process that had to come. I think India has lived with one major extended event, that began about 1000 AD, the Muslim invasion. It meant the cracking open and partial wrecking of what was a complete cultural, religious world until that invasion. I don't think the people of India have been able to come to terms with that wrecking. I don't think they understand what really happened. It's too painful. And I think this BJP movement and that masjid business is part of a new sense of history, a new idea of what happened. It might be misguided, it might be wrong to misuse it politically, but I think it is part of a historical process. And to simply abuse it as Fascist is to fail to understand why it finds an answer in so many hearts in India. .... It could become that. And that has to be dealt with. But it can only be dealt with if both sides understand very clearly the history of the country. I don't think Hindus understand what Islam means and I don't think the people of Islam have tried to understand Hinduism. The two enormous groups have lived together in the sub-continent without understanding one another's faiths."

"India, as she is, is a problem which can only be read by the light of Indian history. Only by a gradual and loving study of how she came to be, can we grow to understand what the country actually is, what the intention of her evolution, and what her sleeping potentiality may be."

"Generally speaking, the men who hitherto have written on the affairs of India, were a set of liars."

"“Those who expect from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome commit the very gregarious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover,… that the chronicles of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren, as those of the early Rajputs.” ... “My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwarra have more than once been checked by a very just remark: ‘When our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?’ ”... “If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmood’s invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the character of their princes and the acts of their reigns?” [The fact appears to be that] “After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other interests, irretrievable losses.”"

"“It is out of the past that the future has to be moulded; it is the past that becomes the future. Therefore the more the Indians study their past, the more glorious will be their future, and whoever tries to bring the past to the door of everyone is a benefactor of the nation.”"

"Since the 1960s, Western scholarship has focused selectively but intensively on the premodern (or “medieval”) and modern literary traditions in about half a dozen Indian languages, resulting in major works of translation, interpretation, and commentary. A selective roster of scholars would include Gordon Roadarmel, Charlotte Vaudeville, Ronald Stuart McGreggor, John Stratton Hawley, Kathryn Hansen, Peter Gaeffke, Mark Jurgensmeyer, Karine Schomer, Linda Hess, Kenneth Bryant, David Rubin, and Philip Lutgendorf in Hindi; Edward C. Dimock, David Kopf, William Radice, and Clinton B. Seely in Bengali; Ian Raeside, Eleanor Zelliot, Philip Engblom, and Ann Feldhaus in Marathi; George L. Hart, David Shulman, and Norman Cutler in Tamil; David Shulman, Hank Heifetz, and Gene H. Rogair in Telugu; and Frances Pritchett and Carlo Coppola in Urdu."

"I am not suggesting that Sanskrit be pushed aggressively, but only that the advantage of this great classical language, which is understood by more people in India than Greek and Latin in modern Europe, must be appreciated and utilized. Further, in the Devanagari script, there exists a possible common script for other Indian languages, though one cannot be too optimistic about the practicability of adopting it in view of the tenacious attachment of people to their own particular scripts. Another link language which flourished in India was Persian which in its interplay with Sanskrit and Arabic produced the great modern language, Urdu. Here again, beginning as a court or camp language, it blossomed into a modern tongue of the people, linking India linguistically with the Arab world."

"Hindavi was the language from old times; when the Ghurids and Turks arrived [in India], Persian began to be used and every high and low person learned it … As I belong to India, it is only fitting that I talk about it. There is a different, original language in every region of this land. Sindhi, Lahori, Kashmiri, Kibar, Dhaur Samundari, Tilangi, Gujar, Ma'bari, Gauri, the languages of Bangalah, Avadh, Delhi and its environs, all these are Hindavi, i.e., Indian languages, current since the olden days and commonly used for all kinds of speech. There is yet another language that is favoured by all the Brahmins. It is known as Sanskrit since ancient times; common people do not know it, only the Brahmins do, but one single Brahmin cannot comprehend its limits. Like Arabic, Sanskrit has a grammar, rules of syntax, and a literature … Sanskrit is a pearl; it may be inferior to Arabic but is superior to Dari … If I knew it well I would praise my sultan in it also."

"The recent five-judge bench Supreme Court judgment in Chebrolu Leela Prasad Rao and Ors v State of AP and Ors, shows us once again how little the 5th Schedule of the Indian constitution which is meant to protect adivasi rights is understood. The reasoning in the judgment – which struck down an Andhra Pradesh government order from 2000 providing 100% reservation for Scheduled Tribe teachers in of the state – moves perilously close to dismantling the entire edifice of the 5th Schedule. [...] Many non-tribals, including lower government officials, have lived for years in tribal areas without feeling the need to learn tribal languages. At the primary level, mutual incomprehension between non-tribal teachers and tribal students hampers the basic education of children. The judges tell us that “It is an obnoxious idea that tribals only should teach the tribals” (para 133), but for far too long, the really obnoxious idea that has pervaded the educational system and is reflected in judgments like this one is that only non-tribals should teach tribals, to “uplift and mainstream” them because “their language and their primitive way of life makes them unfit to put up with the mainstream and to be governed by the s” (para 107)."

"The logic of the Greeks prevents them having the idea at all and it is to the Indian cultures that we must look to find thinkers who are comfortable with the idea that Nothing might be something."

"The Indian religious traditions... accepted the concept of non-being on an equal footing with that of being. Like many other Eastern religions, the Indian culture regarded Nothing as a state from which one might have come and to which one might return.. Where Western religious traditions sought to flee from nothingness... a state of non-being was something to be actively sought by Buddhist and Hindus in order to achieve Nirvana: oneness with the Cosmos."

"No people in the world have ever attained to such a grandeur of thought in ideal conceptions of the Deity and its offspring, MAN, as the Sanscrit metaphysicians and theologians."

"The two foundations of twentieth-century physics—quantum theory and relativity theory—both force us to see the world very much in the way a Hindu, Buddhist … sees it. [...] The scale of this ancient myth is indeed staggering; it has taken the human mind more than two thousand years to come up again with a similar concept."

"Mathematical science was so perfect and astronomical observations so complete that the paths of the sun and the moon were accurately measured. The philosophy of the learned few was perhaps for the first time, firmly allied with the theology of the believing many, and Brahmanism laid down as articles of faith the unity of God, the creation of the world, the immortality of the soul, and the responsibility of man. The remote dwellers upon the Ganges distinctly made known that future life about which Moses is silent or obscure, and that unity and Omnipotence of the Creator which were unknown to the polytheism of the Greek and Roman multitude, and to the dualism of Mithraic legislators, while Vyasa perhaps surpassed Plato in keeping the people tremblingly alive to the punishment which awaited evil deeds.""

"India contains the whole history of philosophy in a nutshell."

"The priority of India is clearer in philosophy than in medicine, though here too origins are veiled, and every conclusion is an hypothesis. Some Upanishads are older than any extant form of Greek philosophy, and Pythagoras, Parmenides and Plato seem to have been influenced by Indian metaphysics; but the speculations of Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras and Empedocles not only antedate the secular philosophy of the Hindus, but bear a sceptical and physical stamp suggesting any other origin than India. Victor Cousin believed that “we are constrained to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy.” It is more probable that no one of the civilizations known to us was the originator of any of the elements of civilization."

"But nowhere else has the lust for philosophy been so strong as in India. It is, with the Hindus, not an ornament or a recreation, but a major interest and practice of life itself; and sages receive in India the honor bestowed in the West upon men of wealth or action. What other nation has ever thought of celebrating festivals with gladiatorial debates between the leaders of rival philosophical schools?"

"In a Rajput painting of the eighteenth century we see a typical Indian “School of Philosophy”—the teacher sits on a mat under a tree, and his pupils squat on the grass before him. Such scenes were to be witnessed everywhere, for teachers of philosophy were as numerous in India as merchants in Babylonia. No other country has ever had so many schools of thought. In one of Buddha’s dialogues we learn that there were sixty-two distinct theories of the soul among the philosophers of his time. “This philosophical nation par excellence” says Count Keyserling, “has more Sanskrit words for philosophical and religious thought than are found in Greek, Latin and German combined.”"

"The Mohammedan invasions put an end to the great age of Hindu philosophy. The assaults of the Moslems, and later of the Christians, upon the native faith drove it, for self-defense, into a timid unity that made treason of all debate, and stifled creative heresy in a stagnant uniformity of thought. By the twelfth century the system of the Vedanta, which in Shankara had tried to be a religion for philosophers, was reinterpreted by such saints as Ramanuja (ca. 1050) into an orthodox worship of Vishnu, Rama and Krishna. Forbidden to think new thoughts, philosophy became not only scholastic but barren; it accepted its dogmas from the priesthood, and proved them laboriously by distinctions without difference, and logic without reason."

"In all these systems, Brahmanical or other, the categories of the intellect are represented as helpless or deceptive before a reality immediately felt or seen; and all our eighteenth-century rationalism appears to the Indian metaphysician as a vain and superficial attempt to subject the incalculable universe to the concepts of a salonnière. “Into blind darkness pass they who worship ignorance; into still greater darkness they who are content with knowledge.” Hindu philosophy begins where European philosophy ends—with an inquiry into the nature of knowledge and the limitations of reason; it starts not with the physics of Thales and Democritus, but with the epistemology of Locke and Kant; it takes mind as that which is most immediately known, and therefore refuses to resolve it into a matter known only mediately and through mind. It accepts an external world, but does not believe that our senses can ever know it as it is."

"Certain characteristic qualities which would not seem to be defects from the Hindu point of view have kept this philosophy from exercising a wider influence in other civilizations. Its method, its scholastic terminology, and its Vedic assumptions handicap it in finding sympathy among nations with other assumptions or more secularized cultures. Its doctrine of Maya gives little encouragement to morality or active virtue; its pessimism is a confession that it has not, despite the theory of Karma, explained evil; and part of the effect of these systems has been to exalt a stagnant quietism in the face of evils that might conceivably have been corrected, or of work that cried out to be done. None the less there is a depth in these meditations which by comparison casts an air of superficiality upon the activistic philosophies generated in more invigorating zones. Perhaps our Western systems, so confident that “knowledge is power,” are the voices of a once lusty youth exaggerating human ability and tenure. As our energies tire in the daily struggle against impartial Nature and hostile Time, we look with more tolerance upon Oriental philosophies of surrender and peace. Hence the influence of Indian thought upon other cultures has been greatest in the days of their weakening or decay. While Greece was winning victories she paid little attention to Pythagoras or Parmenides; when Greece was declining, Plato and the Orphic priests took up the doctrine of reincarnation, while Zeno the Oriental preached an almost Hindu fatalism and resignation; and when Greece was dying, the Neo-Platonists and the Gnostics drank deep at Indian wells. The impoverishment of Europe by the fall of Rome, and the Moslem conquest of the routes between Europe and India, seem to have obstructed, for a millennium, the direct interchange of Oriental and Occidental ideas. But hardly had the British established themselves in India before editions and translations of the Upanishads began to stir Western thought. Fichte conceived an idealism strangely like Shankara’s; Schopenhauer almost incorporated Buddhism, the Upanishads and the Vedanta into his philosophy; and Schelling, in his old age, thought the Upanishads the maturest wisdom of mankind. Nietzsche had dwelt too long with Bismarck and the Greeks to care for India, but in the end he valued above all other ideas his haunting notion of eternal recurrence—a variant of reincarnation."

"With a rigor unknown elsewhere, India has applied itself to analyzing the various conditionings of the human spirit."

"After these conversations with Tagore some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me."

"The six Philosophical Schools, whose principles are explained in the Dersana Sàstra, comprise all the metaphysics of the old Academy, the Stoa, the Lyceum; nor is it possible to read the Vedanta, or the many fine compositions in illustration of it, without believing, that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the sages of India."

"In the west, our understanding of Indian philosophical schools ... has been colored by our own history. The default model for the relationship between these schools is often unwittingly based on models derived from Western religious history: the hostilities between the three religions of the Book, the modern relationship of the various Christian denominations, or even the relation between orthodox and heterodox sects in early Christianity."

"The link between this new physics and dharma has been noted since the discovery of quantum mechanics by Heisenberg and Schrodinger (both Nobel Laureates in physics). Each of these pioneers cited the Upanishads as the only source of philosophy known to them that was consistent with the paradoxical nature of reality according to quantum mechanics."

"Two years spent in the study of Sanskrit under Charles Lanman, and a year in the mazes of Patanjali's metaphysics under the guidance of James Woods, left me in a state of enlightened mystification. A good half of the effort of understanding what the Indian philosophers were after--and their subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys--lay in trying to erase from my mind all the categories and kinds of distinction common to European philosophy from the time of the Greeks. My previous and concomitant study of European philosophy was hardly better than an obstacle. And I came to the conclusion--seeing also that the "influence" of Brahmin and Buddhist thought upon Europe, as in Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Deussen, had largely been through romantic misunderstanding--that my only hope of really penetrating to the heart of that mystery would lie in forgetting how to think and feel as an American or a European: which, for practical as well as sentimental reasons, I did not wish to do."

"The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive, when the British dominion in India shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrances."

"The methods of the Inquisition and the argument of the sword and stake never became popular with Hindu religious teachers. Whatever may be argued against the Hindu system, it must be admitted that it has always stood for absolute liberty of conscience. One religious movement after another has swept over Indian soil, but until the Muhammadan conquest it was never considered justifiable or necessary, to suppress the voice of the preacher and the argument of the philosopher with torture, bloodshed and judicial murder."

"I can venture to affirm, without meaning to pluck a leaf from the never-fading laurels of our immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology, and part of his philosophy, may be found in the Vedas, and even in the works of the Sufis. The most subtle spirit, which he suspected to pervade natural bodies, and, lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion; the emission, reflection, and refraction of light; electricity, calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element, endued with those very powers; and the Vedas abound with allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly ascribe to the Sun, thence called Aditya, or the Attractor"

"What distinguishes the Vedanta philosophy from all other philosophies is that it is at the same time a religion and a philosophy."

"It is surely astounding that such a system as the Vedanta should have slowly been elaborated by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us feel giddy as in mounting the last steps of the swaying spire of a Gothic cathedral. None of our philosophers, including Heraclitus, Plato, Kant or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lightning. Stone follows on stone in regular succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman."

"Even Plato seems to me to be in all main points only a Brahmin’s good pupil."

"The greatest human ideal is the great cause of bringing together the thoughts of Europe and Asia; the great soul of India will topple our world."

"Of course, this entire fabric of Indian life stands solidly on faith, that is to say, on a slender and emotional hypothesis. But amid all the beliefs of Europe, and of Asia, that of the Indian Brahmins seems to me infinitely the most alluring. And the reason why I love the Brahmin more than the other schools of Asiatic thought is because it seems to me to contain them all. Greater than all European philosophies, it is even capable of adjusting itself to the vast hypotheses of modern science. Our Christian religions have tried in vain, when there were no other choice open to them, to adapt themselves to the progress of science. But after having allowed myself to be swept away by the powerful rhythm of Brahmin thought, along the curve or life, with its movement of alternating ascent and return, I come back to my own century, and while finding therein the immense projections of a new cosmogony, offspring of the genius of Einstein, or deriving freely from the discoveries, I yet do not feel that I enter a strange land. I yet can hear resounding still the cosmic symphony of all those planets which forever succeed each other, are extinguished and once more illumined, with their living souls, their humanities, their gods – according to the laws of the eternal To Become, the Brahmin Samsara – I hear Siva dancing, dancing in the heart of the world, in my own heart."

"The study of Japanese thought is the study of Indian thought."

"I like to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times."

"It was my first meeting with [Indian] philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless."

"When I was a student, the term "Indian philosophy: was usually regarded as self-contradictory, a contradictio in adjecto, comparable to such an absurdity as "wooden steel." "Indian philosophy" was something that simply did not exist."

"In India, institutional drift worked differently and led to the development of a uniquely rigid hereditary caste system that limited the functioning of markets and the allocation of labor across occupations much more severely than the feudal order in medieval Europe. It also underpinned another strong form of absolutism under the Mughal rulers. Most European countries had similar systems in the Middle Ages. Modern Anglo-Saxon surnames such as Baker, Cooper, and Smith are direct descendants of hereditary occupational categories. Bakers baked, coopers made barrels, and smiths forged metals. But these categories were never as rigid as Indian caste distinctions and gradually became meaningless as predictors of a person’s occupation. Though Indian merchants did trade throughout the Indian Ocean, and a major textile industry developed, the caste system and Mughal absolutism were serious impediments to the development of inclusive economic institutions in India. By the nineteenth century, things were even less hospitable for industrialization as India became an extractive colony of the English."

"What is the difference between Caste and Varna as understood by the Mahatma? I find none. As defined by the Mahatma, Varna becomes merely a different name for Caste for the simple reason that it is the same in essence—namely pursuit of ancestral calling. Far from making progress the Mahatma has suffered retrogression. By putting this interpretation upon the Vedic conception of Varna he has really made ridiculous what was sublime. While I reject the Vedic Varnavyavastha for reasons given in the speech I must admit that the Vedic theory of Varna as interpreted by Swami Dayanand and some others is a sensible and an inoffensive thing. It did not admit birth as a determining factor in fixing the place of an individual in society. It only recognized worth. The Mahatma’s view of Varna not only makes nonsense of the Vedic Varna but it makes it an abominable thing. Varna and Caste are two very different concepts. Varna is based on the principle of each according to his worth-while Caste is based on the principle of each according to his birth. The two are as distinct as chalk is from cheese. In fact there is an antithesis between the two. If the Mahatma believes as he does in every one following his or her ancestral calling, then most certainly he is advocating the Caste System and that in calling it the Varna System he is not only guilty of terminologicale inexactitude, but he is causing confusion worse confounded. I am sure that all his confusion is due to the fact that the Mahatma has no definite and clear conception as to what is Varna and what is Caste and as to the necessity of either for the conservation of Hinduism."

"One thing I want to impress upon you is that Manu did not give the law of caste and that he could not do so. Caste existed long before Manu. He was an upholder of it and therefore philosophized about it, but certainly he did not and could not ordain the present order of Hindu Society. ... The spread and growth of the caste system is too gigantic a task to be achieved by the power or cunning of an individual or of a class. ... The Brahmins may have been guilty of many things, and I dare say they were, but the imposing of the caste system on the non-Brahmin population was beyond their mettle."

"[The racial theory of caste] not only runs counter to the results of anthropometry, but it also finds very little support from such facts as we know about the ethnology of India. That the people of India were once organized on tribal basis is well-known, and although the tribes have become castes, the tribal organisation still remains intact."

"The Mahomedans themselves recognize two main social divisions, (1) Ashraf or Sharaf and (2) Ajlaf Ashraf means ' noble ' and includes all undoubted descendants of foreigners and converts from high caste Hindus. All other Mahomedans including the occupational groups and all converts of lower ranks, are known by the contemptuous terms, ' Ajlaf , ' wretches ' or ' mean people ': they are also called Kamina or Itar, ' base ' or Rasil, a corruption of Rizal, ' worthless '. In some places a third class, called Arzal or ' lowest of all ', is added. With them no other Mahomedan would associate, and they are forbidden to enter the mosque to use the public burial ground."

"“European students of caste (…), themselves impregnated by colour prejudices, very readily imagined it to be the chief factor in the Caste problem. But nothing can be farther from the truth, and Dr. Ketkar is right when he insists that ‘all the princes whether they belonged to the so-called Aryan race or to the so-called Dravidian race, were Aryas. Whether a tribe or a family was racially Aryan or Dravidian was a question which never troubled the people of India until foreign scholars came in and began to draw the line.’"

"The Brahmin of Panjab is racially of the same stock as the Chamar of Punjab". ... "Caste system does not demarcate racial division. Caste system is a social division of people of the same race."

"The table for Bengal shows that the Chandal who stands sixth in the scheme of social precedence and whose touch pollutes, is not much differentiated from the Brahmin (…) In Bombay the Deshastha Brahmin bears a closer affinity to the Son-Koli, a fisherman caste, than to his own compeer, the Chitpavan Brahmin. The Mahar, the Untouchable of the Maratha region, comes next together with the Kunbi, the peasant. They follow in order the Shenvi Brahmin, the Nagar Brahmin and the high-caste Maratha. These results (…) mean that there is no correspondence between social gradation and physical differentiation in Bombay."

"Caste was originally an arrangement for the distribution of functions in society, just as much as class in Europe, but the principle on which the distribution was based in India was peculiar to this country.... A Brahmin was a Brahmin not by mere birth, but because he discharged the duty of preserving the spiritual and intellectual elevation of the race, and he had to cultivate the spiritual temperament and acquire the spiritual training which could alone qualify him for the task. The Kshatriya was a Kshatriya not merely because he was the son of warriors and princes, but because he discharged the duty of protecting the country and preserving the high courage and manhood of the nation, and he had to cultivate the princely temperament and acquire the strong and lofty Samurai training which alone fitted him for his duties. So it was with the Vaishya whose function was to amass wealth for the race and the Sudra who discharged the humbler duties of service without which the other castes could not perform their share of labour for the common good.... Essentially there was, between the devout Brahmin and the devout Sudra, no inequality in the single virat purusa [Cosmic Spirit] of which each was a necessary part. Chokha Mela, the Maratha Pariah, became the Guru of Brahmins proud of their caste purity; the Chandala taught Shankaracharya: for the Brahman was revealed in the body of the Pariah and in the Chandala there was the utter presence of Shiva the Almighty.... Caste therefore was not only an institution which ought to be immune from the cheap second-hand denunciations so long in fashion, but a supreme necessity without which Hindu civilisation could not have developed its distinctive character or worked out its unique mission. But to recognise this is not to debar ourselves from pointing out its later perversions and desiring its transformation. It is the nature of human institutions to degenerate, to lose their vitality, and decay, and the first sign of decay is the loss of flexibility and oblivion of the essential spirit in which they were conceived. The spirit is permanent, the body changes; and a body which refuses to change must die. The spirit expresses itself in many ways while itself remaining essentially the same but the body must change to suit its changing environments if it wishes to live. There is no doubt that the institution of caste degenerated. It ceased to be determined by spiritual qualifications which, once essential, have now come to be subordinate and even immaterial and is determined by the purely material tests of occupation and birth. By this change it has set itself against the fundamental tendency of Hinduism which is to insist on the spiritual and subordinate the material and thus lost most of its meaning. The spirit of caste arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority came to dominate it instead of the spirit of duty, and the change weakened the nation and helped to reduce us to our present conditions."

"[A] problematic assumption in the genetics literature is that caste is unchanging."

"Not by birth does one become an outcaste, not by birth does one become a brahman. By one's action one becomes an outcaste, by one's action one becomes a brahman."

"For instance, W.R. Cornish, who supervised census operations in Madras Presidency in 1871, wrote: ‘Whether there was ever a period in which the Hindus were composed of four classes is exceedingly doubtful’. Similarly, C.F. Magrath, who authored a report on the 1871 Bihar census, wrote that ‘now meaningless division into the four castes alleged to have been made by Manu should be put aside’."

"Until well into the colonial period, much of the subcontinent was still populated by people for whom the formal distinctions of caste were of only limited importance, even in parts of the so-called Hindu heartland… The institutions and beliefs which are now often described as the elements of traditional caste were only just taking shape as recently as the early 18th Century. 180"

"The early Indo-Aryans could no more have thought in modern terms of the race prejudice than they could have invented the airplane."

"For the British, caste was a great obstacle, an unmitigated evil not because they believed in castelessness or a non-hierarchical system but because it stood in their way of their breaking Indian society. … caste did hinder the process of atomization of Indian society and made … conquest and governance more difficult. The present fury and theoretical formulation against the organization of Indian society into castes, whatever the justification or otherwise of caste today, thus begins with British rule. 178"

"Historically, the insistence on including caste among the criteria for Hinduism is not so innocent: it was part of the British 'divide and rule' strategy against the Freedom Movement. (...) These criteria were calculated to exclude the lowest castes and certain sects, regardless of their beliefs and Hindu practices... The aim was to fragment Hindu society: 'Given the upper caste character of the leaders of the Swadeshi movement, this 'test' was designed to encourage the detachment of low castes from the 'Hindu' category, reducing the numbers on whose behalf the upper castes claimed to speak.' The 'test' in effect implemented a suggestion by Muslim League leader Ameer Ali (1909) to detach the lower castes from the Hindu category. Ever since, it has remained a constant in anti-Hindu circles to maximize the importance of caste, and in Hindu Revivalist circles to work for its decrease in importance or even its ultimate abolition."

"Caste, as we know it today, is not in fact some unchanged survival of ancient India, not some single system that reflects a core civilizational value, not a basic expression of Indian tradition. Rather, I will argue that caste (again, as we know it today) is a modern phenomenon, that it is, specifically, the product of an historical encounter between India and Western colonial rule. By this I do not mean to imply that it was simply invented by the too clever British, now credited with so many imperial patents that what began as colonial critique has turned into another form of imperial adulation. But I am suggesting that it was under the British that “caste” became a single term capable of expressing, organizing, and above all “systematizing” India’s diverse forms of social identity, community, and organization. This was achieved through an identifiable (if contested) ideological canon as the result of a concrete encounter with colonial modernity during two hundred years of British domination. In short, colonialism made caste what it is today."

"This system had grown more rigid and complex since the Vedic period; not only because it is in the nature of institutions to become stiff with age, but because the instability of the political order, and the overrunning of India by alien peoples and creeds, had intensified caste as a barrier to the mixture of Moslem and Hindu blood. ...It (the caste system) offered an escape from the plutocracy or the military dictatorship which are apparently the only alternatives to aristocracy; it gave to a country shorn of political stability by a hundred invasions and revolutions a social, moral and cultural order and continuity rivaled only by the Chinese. Amid a hundred anarchic changes in the state, the Brahmans maintained, through the system of caste, a stable society, and preserved, augmented and transmitted civilization. The nation bore with them patiently, even proudly, because every one knew that in the end they were the one indispensable government of India."

"It has, at any rate, been an extremely consequential mistake. That white Aryan invaders defeated black aboriginal resisters has been taken over by numerous authors, including many who had no ideological agenda but naïvely lapped it up. It underpinned a second and similar mistranslation, viz. that the Sanskrit term for “caste”, varṇa, means “colour” in the sense of “skin colour” In fact, varṇa means “one in a spectrum”: a colour in the visual spectrum, a class in the social spectrum, but also a letter in the sound spectrum (hence varṇamāla for “alphabet”). The whole edifice of the “racial Aryan”, notorious through its Nazi application but equally popular in British colonial discourse and among its Indian copycats, was based on nothing better than a simple mistranslation... Actually, jati has all the meanings which the word “race” had in the 18th-19th century: kinship group, nation, race, species. Thus, manava-jati means “the human race”, or more accurately, “the human species”. And varna, “colour”, has nothing to do with skin colour, but refers to symbolic colours allotted to the elements, the cardinal directions, and likewise also to the layers of society... Moreover, “Colour” might even not be the original, Vedic meaning of varNa. Reformist Hindus eager to disentangle the institution of varNa from any doctrines of genetic determinism, derive it from the root var-, “choose” (as in svayamvara, “[a girl’s] own choice [of a husband]”), with the implication that one’s varNa is not a matter of birth but of personal choice. This seems to tally with Stanley Insler’s rendering, in his classic translation of The Gathas of Zarathustra, of the corresponding Avestan term varanA as “preference” (which other translators sometimes stretch to mean “conviction”, “religious affiliation”). But we believe that the root meaning is even simpler.... In the Rg-Veda, the word varNa usually (17 out of 22 times) refers to the “lustre” (i.e. “one’s own typical light”, a meaning obviously related to “colour”) of specified gods: Usha, Agni, Soma, etc.69 As for the remaining cases, in 3:34:5 and 9:71:2 it indicates the lustrous colour of the sky at dawn. In 1:104:2 and 2:12:4, reference is only to quelling the varNa of the DAsas, - meaning “the Dasas’ luster” (in the first case, Ralph Griffith translates it as “the fury of the DAsa”). Finally, in the erotic Rg-Vedic hymn 4:179, verse 6, where Agastya, in doing the needful with his wife Lopamudra to obtain progeny, is said to satisfy “both varNas”, this is understood by some as referring quite plainly to the two families of husband and wife, who rejoice in the arrival of a grandchild. Since the hymn mentions the conflict between sexuality and asceticism, others interpret it as meaning “both paths (of worldliness and world-renunciation)”. At any rate, there is simply no question of reading a racist meaning into it."

"This social system did not exist in isolation. Thus, centuries of foreign domination must have had an impact on it. We can say a priori that when leading groups in society come to groan under the weight of foreign oppression, they themselves will weigh heavier on the lower groups.... A society that is put on the defensive, will harden and develop internal friction. Again it may sound like an easy explanation, but it is just quite plausible that a part of the inhuman traits of the caste system as recent generations found it, must be attributed to later outside influences like the impoverishing, brutalizing and demoralizing effect of Muslim rule. ... The essence of Varnashramadharma, the social philosophy that allots different duties to differently minded groups of people, as well as to the different age-groups, and that allows communities to develop at intermediary levels between individual and state, is quite the opposite of the uniformization so typical of totalitarian systems."

"Tribal endogamy explains the Hindu caste system. As Vedic society, an advanced and differentiated society characterized by class (varna) hierarchy, expanded from the Northwest into India's interior, it absorbed ever more tribes but allowed them their distinctive traditions and first of all their defining tradition, viz. their endogamy. This way, endogamous self-contained units or tribes became endogamous segments of Hindu society, or castes."

"The main source of caste consciousness in India is precisely this indigenous tradition of tribal endogamy. When tribes integrated into expanding Vedic society, they were permitted to retain their identiy and the structure defining their frontiers, viz. their endogamy... Social hierarchy is not a racialist imposition by the Aryans, but a near-universal phenomenon especially pronounced among Indo-Pacific societes including most non-Aryan populations."

"It has, at any rate, been an extremely consequential mistake. That white Aryan invaders defeated black aboriginal resisters has been taken over by numerous authors, including many who had no ideological agenda but naïvely lapped it up. It underpinned a second and similar mistranslation, viz. that the Sanskrit term for “caste”, varṇa, means “colour” in the sense of “skin colour” In fact, varṇa means “one in a spectrum”: a colour in the visual spectrum, a class in the social spectrum, but also a letter in the sound spectrum (hence varṇamāla for “alphabet”). The whole edifice of the “racial Aryan”, notorious through its Nazi application but equally popular in British colonial discourse and among its Indian copycats, was based on nothing better than a simple mistranslation."

"But I am He Made the Four Castes, and portioned them a place After their qualities and gifts."

"[Hans Hock also points to the genesis of the racial interpretation in the context of the] “scramble of the European powers to divide up the non-European world”, in which “the British take-over of India seemed to provide a perfect parallel to the assumed take-over of prehistoric India by the invading ‘Aryans’”... “such notions as ‘race’, defined in terms of skin color, are an invention of (early) modern European colonialism and imperialism... [the racial interpretation] “must be considered dubious”. ... “early Sanskrit literature offers no conclusive evidence for preoccupation with skin color. More than that, some of the greatest Epic heroes and heroines such as Krshna, Draupadi, Arjuna, Nakula and (...) Damayanti are characterized as dark-skinned. Similarly, the famous cave-paintings of Ajanta depict a vast range of skin colors. But in none of these contexts do we find that darker skin color disqualifies a person from being considered good, beautiful, or heroic.”"

"Early Sanskrit literature offers no conclusive evidence for preoccupation with skin color. More than that, some of the greatest Epic heroes and heroines such as Krshna, Draupadi, Arjuna, Nakula and (...) Damayanti are characterized as dark-skinned. Similarly, the famous cave-paintings of Ajanta depict a vast range of skin colors. But in none of these contexts do we find that darker skin color disqualifies a person from being considered good, beautiful, or heroic. Even more significant, in these and other passages in Sanskrit literature that characterize a person's skin color as dark, this characterization applies to individuals - we have no evidence of the classification of entire racial groups in terms of skin color."

"In the Gopatha Brahmana, brahmins are sukla white, while the Kathaka samhita uses the term sukla white to refer to the vaysia, and more significantly, characterizes the rajsanya as dhumra dark. Later on the caste colors are sukla white for the brahmin, rakta red for the kshatriya, pita yellow for the vasya, and krsna black for the sudra. ... But the classical system of color association can be made sense of in 'ideological ' terms: white, i.e. ritually pure for the brahmin, red the color of blood for the warrior caste, yellow the color of ripe grain and perhaps also of gold... and black the opposite of ritually pure white for the serfs etc who came to be excluded from the ritual at a fairly early period."

"It is held by almost all historians of this period, including those who neither swear by Marxism nor apologise for Islam, that the Hindu failure had its source in the Hindu social system, particularly the caste structure. But that proposition does not stand a deeper probe. Moreover, the proposition is preposterous because it reverses the chronological sequence. The Hindu social system became moribund and the caste system rigid only after Hindus had lost political power. There is sufficient evidence to prove that on the eve of Islamic invasions, the Hindu social system did not harbour the defects which it developed at a later stage. It is my considered opinion that it was their highly organic social system which saved the Hindus from extinction in the initial stages, and provided the powerful impetus which propelled them to victory in the long run. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa were engulfed by Islam because they did not have a social structure which could withstand the storm."

"The effect of the Mussalman political creed upon Hindu social life was two-fold: it increased the rigour of the caste system and aroused a revolt against it."

"'It would be a mistake to suppose that Buddhism and Jainism were directed from the outset consciously in opposition to the caste system. Caste, in fact, at the time of the rise of Buddhism was only beginning to develop; and in later days, when Buddhism commenced its missionary careers, it took caste with it into regions where upto that time the institution had not penetrated.'"

"While medieval Islamic literature referred to Hindus as 'infidels' and denounced polytheism and image worship, there was no criticism of the caste system, the theory of pollution and oppression of untouchables that were rampant in medieval India. ... The attitude of the Muslims towards the caste system was by no means one of disapprobation..."

"It is needless to ask of a saint the caste to which he belongs; For the priest, the warrior. the tradesman, and all the thirty-six castes, alike are seeking for God. It is but folly to ask what the caste of a saint may be; The barber has sought God, the washerwoman, and the carpenter — Even Raidas was a seeker after God."

"However, contemporary writings of Persian chroniclers nowhere mention caste as a factor leading to conversions. Muslim historians of medieval India were surely aware of the existence of the caste system in Hindu society; Alberuni, Abul Fazl and emperor Jahangir, to mention a few. And yet no one mentions even once tyranny on the low caste people as cause for conversion. Their evidence shows beyond doubt that conversions in India were brought about by the same methods and processes as seen in Arabia, Persia, Central Asia, etc. India was not the first country where Islam was introduced in medieval times. It had spread in Persia, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and North Africa before it came to India. There was no caste system in these countries and yet there were large-scale conversions there."

"Particularly the Delhi Sultanate was hardly a functioning empire... In the Mewat region south of Delhi, the Shudras led the unrelenting resistance against the Sultans, waging a guerilla operation from hide-outs in the forest. Sultans Nasiruddin and Balban had to clear away the forest before they could hunt down and forcibly convert a substantial part of this population. K.S. Lal quotes an inscription, dated AD 1345, in which the Reddi dynasty of Andhra describes how after the elimination of the Kshatriya defenders, the duty of defending cows and Brahmins fell on the Shudras, “born of the feet of Vishnu”... Another inscription for the same dynasty proudly proclaims Vema’s birth from “the victorious fourth varna”, which “sprang from the feet of Vishnu”, and which ruled “the remainder of the territory once ruled by the dwijas [before the Muslim conquest]”, and describes how his first son Anna-Vota gave agraharas to the Brahmins and how his second son Anna-Vema freed the country of the “crowd of enemies” and used his wealth to sponsor the “men of learning”. It seems that the Shudras took it as a proud duty to defend the country against the Muslims and uphold the Brahminical culture."

"Lower castes are genetically closer to the upper castes of their own region than to people of the same caste rank in other parts of India. A recent survey has yielded this conclusion: “Detailed anthropomorphic surveys carried out among the people of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu revealed significant regional differences within a caste and a closer resemblance between castes of different varnas within a region than between sub-populations of the caste from different regions.”"

"Discussing the early Vedic period, V.M. Apte says that the Rig Veda refers to the varnas in a way that cannot be considered discriminatory or hierarchical. He concludes that the Brahmins did not constitute an exclusive caste or race and the prerogative of composing hymns and officating at the services of the deities in the age of the Rig Veda was not entirely confined to men of priestly families. Even the other vocations such as being a poet or a physician were more flexible. Apte emphasizes that in the Rig Veda, there is not even a remote hint of prohibitions of inter-dining or intermarrying among the varnas; these are the prohibitions that have been considered the most serious forms of oppression in recent times."

"In the subsequent Smriti period... Some historians speculate that this was the period when foreign kings became established in certain parts of India, and as a result of this, or as a reaction to it, there emerged a practice to fix legal rights based on varnas. it could be that brahmins came up with such laws in order to limit the rights of the foreign kshatriya kings at the time."

"In fact, there is no record that Indian society on a large scale decided to abandon identities based on varna or jati as a result of the teachings of the Buddha."

"G.C. Pande, the noted Sanskrit scholar, says that only the Dharmashastra in the post-Vedic period started to pervert the original idea of varna by conflating it with jati. And this period is when the ritual superiority of the brahmins got converted into a more or less formal hereditary right of priesthood."

"The British census by Lord Risley ... was the basis for creating the caste hierarchy on birth on a permanent basis."

"British India... was as much infected by caste as Indian India."

"‘The Germanic Middle Ages was trying for the restoration of the Aryan caste order’ [...] Medieval organisation looks like a strange groping for winning back those conceptions on which the ancient Indian-Aryan society rested, – but with pessimistic values that have their origin in the soil of racial decadence."

"The taboo-based institution of untouchability, probably originating in neolithic cultures in South India (according to George Hart: The Poems of Ancient Tamil, 1975, OUP Delhi 1999, p.119 ff.), was unknown in Vedic society but was adopted throughout India well before the Muslim age.... All the same, Islam did a lot to aggravate these social problems. Marrying off your daughter at the onset of puberty became a sensible safety measure once unaccountable Muslims soldiers and rulers were on the prowl for girls. Caste reform couldn't become a priority as long as Hindu society was on the defensive and forced to focus on sheer survival. Upper-caste Hindus also didn't escape the human tendency of weighing more heavily on their subordinates when they themselves were under the boot of the Muslim occupying forces."

"Today, India has only two castes – those who are poor and those who want to eradicate poverty.”"

"A budding line in Hindu Revivalist history-rewriting, rather well in touch with modem Western scholarship, is to question this alleged age-old rigidity of caste and emphasize the relative fluidity of the system before British policies and the census classifications rigidified it. Even Jawaharlal Nehru observed: 'But I think that the conception of Hindu society as a very conservative society (...) is not quite correct. In the past, changes took place not by legislation but by custom; by the people themselves changing.'"

"The Brahmins, these much-vaunted philosophers, willingly call themselves the [gods] of the earth, and to justify that title, they attribute this genealogy to themselves; now they descend from those seven Richis or penitents who were saved from the flood together with Manou, and who, because of their extreme holiness, were transported to heaven and are the seven stars of the Great Bear; Now, and this is the most popular fable, when Brahma wanted to create men, he drew the Brahmins from his head; the Kchatrias or warriors from his shoulders; the Vaishyas or merchants from his belly; and the Shudras or artisans from his feet. These are the four castes established and consecrated by the philosophers of India as the foundation of the religious and political constitution. (vol. I, p. 707)"

"[...] the Brahmins are the Pharisees of India, because of their affectation in their way of life, their scrupulousness about external stains, their constant use of ablutions and bathing, their zeal, their attention to detail, the same negligence of what is most essential, the same pride, the same ostentation, and the same hypocrisy. Nor are there any who literally practice what the Savior says, that is, who drink through a strainer for fear of swallowing an insect, while swallowing a camel, that is, trampling on justice, humanity, and mercy. (vol. I, p. 708)"

"Far below the lowest caste and well below the sudras, a quarter of the Indian population languishes in servitude, disgrace, and misery, under the name of parias. Eating with these unfortunate people, or touching food prepared by them, or even drinking water drawn by them; using earthenware vessels they have held in their hands; setting foot in their dwellings or allowing them to enter one's own, are, in the eyes of philosophers, crimes that exclude an Indian from his caste. (vol. I, p. 708)"

"One of the most important components of such injunctions of the past that we have blindly carried on and which deserves to be thrown in the dustbins of history is the rigid caste system. This system has vivisected our Hindu society into so many micro-fragments, forever at war with one another. From temples, streets, houses, jobs, village councils, to institutions of law and legislature, it has only injected a spectre of eternal conflict between two Hindus; weakened our unity and resolve to stand united against any external threats. It is one of the biggest impediments in the conception of a Hindu Rashtra."

"The new self-styled social justice intellectuals and parties do not want an India without castes, they want castes without dharma."

"An inscription of Singaya-Nayaka (AD 1368) says: “The three castes, viz. Brahmanas and the next [Kshatriyas and Vaishyas], were produced from the face, the arms and the thighs of the Lord; and for their support was born the fourth caste from His feet. That the latter caste is purer than the former [three] is self-evident; for this caste was born along with the river Ganga [which also springs from His feet], the purifier of the three worlds. The members of this caste are eagerly attentive to their duties, not wicked, pure-minded, and are devoid of passion and other such blemishes; they ably bear all the burden of the earth by helping those born in the kingly caste.” Another inscription relates how his relative Kapaya-Nayaka “rescued the Andhra country from the ravages of the Mohammedans”."

"For far too long, education in India has been seen by the establishment as a ‘civilising’ mission designed to make adivasis and dalits into mental clones of the upper castes, even if they continue in their subordinate jobs. Merit is defined merely as efficiency in achieving this goal."

"Judging by the continued over-representation of Hindu upper castes in gainful employment in this country, one might well say that the same has come to be fixed in a "highly unreasonable and arbitrary manner" and there is no rhyme or reason to the upper caste Hindu conviction that it is only they who have the natural right to rule over, provide justice to, or teach in this country, and that children of all other castes and religions must be grateful for the education and justice they get."

"[Trautmann likewise points out that there is no contextual evidence supporting the nontraditional interpretation of varna, “colour, caste” as “skin colour”:] “On the evidence of use it appears that varna here simply means ‘category, social group’.”"

"Brahmin writers have not only codified and justified the existing caste system, and possibly hardened it; in the final editing of many influential classics of Puranic Hinduism, they have also unnecessarily extended caste distinction beyond the social sphere, incorporating spiritual liberation in the calculus of karma and caste duties.... 'There has been an enormous shift in attitudes between the period of the former, among the earlier additions, and the latter, among the latest parts included in the text', viz. an appalling hardening of caste discrimination. The harsh caste discrimination of recent centuries is a vaguely datable innovation in Hindu social history, not an age-old conditions.... This contrast between less casteism in antiquity and more casteism in the Christian era is even proven by Buddhist anti-caste polemic itself. As Maurice Winternitz ... notes about the Vajrasûchî, a text attributed to the Brahmin-born monk Ashvaghosha: 'This work refutes the Brahmanical caste system very cuttingly. The author (...) seeks to prove from the Brahmanical texts themselves, by quotations from the Veda, the Mahâbhârata and the law book of Manu, how frail the claims of the Brahman caste are.'"

"Vedic civilization acknowledges among its greatest spokesmen members of "backward" communities such as the Mahabharata's author Vyasa, the Ramayana's author Valmiki or the Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar. Its understanding of "Arya" is not as a racial nor even a linguistic term, but as a cultural term, a synonym for "Vedic", neither more nor less."

"There is no country in the world without caste. In India, from caste we reach the point where there is no caste. Caste is based throughout on that principle. The plan in India is to make everybody a Brahmin, the Brahmin being the ideal of humanity. If you read the history of India you will find that attempts have always been made to raise the lower classes. Many are the classes that have been raised. Many more will follow till the whole will become Brahmin. That is the plan. We have to raise them without bringing down anybody... Indian caste is better than the caste which prevails in Europe or America. I do not say it is absolutely good. Where would you be if there were no caste? Where would be your learning and other things, if there were no caste? There would be nothing left for Europeans to study if caste had never existed. The Mohammedans would have smashed everything to pieces.” ... “Caste is continually changing, rituals are continually changing. it is the substance, the principle that does not change... Caste should not go; but should only be readjusted occasionally. Within the old structure is to be found life enough for the building of two hundred thousand new ones. It is sheer nonsense to desire the abolition of caste. The new method is - evolution of the old.”"

"And the more you go on fighting and quarrelling about all trivialities such as “Dravidian” and “Aryan” and the question of Brahmins and non-Brahmins and all that, the further you are from that accumulation of energy and power which is going to make the future India."

"Swami Vivekananda said that the four castes, by turn, governed human society. The brahmin dominated the thought-current of the world during the glorious days of the ancient Hindu civilization. Then came the rule of the kshattriya, the military as manifested through the supremacy of Europe from the time of the Roman Empire to the middle of the seventeenth century. Next followed the rule of the vaisya, marked by the rise of America. The Swami prophesied the coming supremacy of the sudra class. After the completion of the cycle, he said, the spiritual culture would again assert itself and influence human civilization through the power of the brahmin. Swami Vivekananda often spoke of the future greatness of India as surpassing all her glories of the past."

"A Hindu marrying a Hindu may lose his caste, but not his Hindutva."

"India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soil. It would seem as if she should have kept the lead, and should be to-day not the meek dependent of an alien master, but mistress of the world, and delivering law and command to every tribe and nation in it. But, in truth, there was never any possibility of such supremacy for her. If there had been but one India and one language — but there were eighty of them! Where there are eighty nations and several hundred governments, fighting and quarreling must be the common business of life; unity of purpose and policy are impossible; out of such elements supremacy in the world cannot come. Even caste itself could have had the defeating effect of a multiplicity of tongues, no doubt; for it separates a people into layers, and layers, and still other layers, that have no community of feeling with each other; and in such a condition of things as that, patriotism can have no healthy growth."

"Ordinarily, the propagation of Hinduism occurs in approximately the following way. ... Native deities are rebaptized with the names of Hindu gods and goddesses. ... Some Brahman is requested to provide and take charge of ritual concerns and thereby also to convince himself and provide testimony to the fact that they—the rulers of the tribe—were of ancient, only temporarily forgotten, knightly (Kshatriya) blood."

"Legitimation by a recognized religion has always been decisive for an alliance between politically and socially dominant classes and the priesthood. Integration into the Hindu community provided such religious legitimation for the ruling stratum. It not only endowed the ruling stratum of the barbarians with recognized rank in the cultural world of Hinduism, but, through their transformation into castes, secured their superiority over the subject classes with an efficiency unsurpassed by any other religion."

"Therefore, my friends, it is no use fighting among the castes. What good will it do? It will divide us all the more, weaken us all the more, degrade us all the more."

"The object of the peoples of Europe is to exterminate all in order to live themselves. The aim of the Aryans is to raise all up to their own level, nay, even to a higher level than themselves. The means of European civilisation is the sword; of the Aryans, the division into different Varnas. This system of division into different Varnas is the stepping stone to civilisation, making one rise higher and higher in proportion to one's learning and culture. In Europe, it is everywhere victory to the strong and death to the weak. In the land of Bharata, every social rule is for the protection of the weak."

"What is now required is a carefully and scientifically edited Dictionary or Gazetteer of the Castes, and Tribes, and social distinctions of British India, arranged alphabetically under the leading name, but carefully giving all the synonyms, and alternative names, carefully transliterated in the Roman Character, and given also in the local Indian Character. It is an idle war to fight against Caste, which exists in the atmosphere of India. The English is but an additional Caste to the previously existing catalogue. There are also many compensating advantages. All secret societies of a dangerous political character are impossible in a population, which is honeycombed with deep, though innocent, fissures: the panchayet of the Caste is a welcome and powerful ally to a just Ruler: the old Roman proverb applies, Divide et impera. Difference of Religion and language, great as they are, are scarcely so operative as difference of Caste. Then, again, the necessity of a general poor law to relieve the indigent is obviated by the existence of Caste. The respectability of a community is maintained by the enforcement of wise Caste-rules: they are felt, though not written, by Europeans in their own country. The English Government has steadily ignored Caste, as far as the administration of public affairs is concerned, but respected the private rights of every class of its subjects, and the Civil Courts will give a remedy for any wanton outrage of the feelings of the meanest of its subjects; while, on the other hand, any attempt to monopolize the use of wells, or other places of public convenience, or to place any section of the community under a ban, causing injury to person or property, is sternly repressed. I am glad to hear that there is a prospect of an Ethnological Survey of British India."

"W.R. Cornish, who supervised census operations in Madras Presidency in 1871, wrote: ‘Whether there was ever a period in which the Hindus were composed of four classes is exceedingly doubtful’."

"Similarly, C.F. Magrath, who authored a report on the 1871 Bihar census, wrote that ‘now meaningless division into the four castes alleged to have been made by Manu should be put aside’."

"The Cambridge anthropologist Susan Bayly writes: Until well into the colonial period, much of the subcontinent was still populated by people for whom the formal distinctions of caste were of only limited importance, even in parts of the so-called Hindu heartland… The institutions and beliefs which are now often described as the elements of traditional caste were only just taking shape as recently as the early 18th Century."

"Charsley explains: ‘One census commissioner after another struggled to discern some order amongst the differently-based groups.’8"

"It is interesting to note that the census commissioner for India complained from Bengal that ‘the ignorant classes have very little idea of what caste means and are prone to return either their occupation, or their sub-caste, or their clan, or else some title by which they are known to their fellow-villagers’."

"For example, in Baroda, the superintendent of census operations in charge said that Risley’s terms were ‘quite exotic’ because in his province ‘no such sharp distinctions are laid down here’. He took recourse to an alphabetical listing of castes without hierarchy."

"The colonisers invented or constructed Indian social identities using categories of convenience during a period that covered roughly the 19th Century. This was done to serve the British Indian government’s own interests - primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed. A very large, complex and regionally diverse system of faiths and social identities was simplified to a degree that probably has no parallel in world history, entirely new categories and hierarchies were created, incompatible or mismatched parts were stuffed together, new boundaries were created, and flexible boundaries hardened. The resulting categorical system became rigid during the next century and quarter, as the made-up categories came to be associated with real rights. Religion-based electorates in British India and caste-based reservations in independent India made amorphous categories concrete. There came to be real and material consequences of belonging to one category instead of another."

"According to Charsley, the problem is that it ‘masks local heterogeneity as well as setting up a uniformity more apparent than real between areas. It simplifies the problem of understanding Indian society, at the cost of obscuring the need to come to terms with one of its major and analytically important characteristics: diversity’."

"Caste becomes a legally recognized group to which everyone either belongs unambiguously or does not. For castes with state-allocated benefits and privileges, certificates are to be obtained to prove membership and hence validate claims.22"

"… a transformation has been achieved of the far less tidy, less uniform and more ambiguous divisions of society in preceding centuries which we saw still represented clearly in the results of Risley’s great experiment at the start of the century.23"

"The current debate as to whether Untouchables replicate or reject the caste system which devalues them illustrates the danger here of creating an unreal problem by misreading the nature of the category.24"

"… the concept sets up a category defined as the bottom of a hierarchically ordered society but in practice traps and equates a variety of castes differently placed economically, socially, culturally and politically.25"

"When (gods) divided Purusha, into how many parts did they cut him up? What was his mouth? What arms (had he)? What (two objects) are said (to have been) his thighs and feet? The Brahmana was his mouth; the rajah (king or kshatriya) was made his arms; the being called the vaishya was his thighs; the Shudra sprang from his feet."

"Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata says the following: The marks of the shudra are found in a brahmin; but a shudra is not necessarily a shudra nor a brahmin a brahmin. in whomever a brahmin's marks are found, he is known as a brahmin and in whomever they are not found, him we designate as a shudra."

"Bhisma advised Yudhishthira that a king should have a Council of Ministers which should include "four Brahmins...; eight Kshtriyas...; twenty-one wealthy Vaishyas and four Shudras of blameless character and inner self-control"."

"The only explanation is to be found in the Mahabharata, which says that in the beginning of the Satya Yuga there was one caste, the Brahmins, and then by difference of occupations they went on dividing themselves into different castes, and that is the only true and rational explanation that has been given. And in the coming Satya Yuga all the other castes will have to go back to the same condition."

"‘The four varnas were created by me on the basis of character and occupation.’"

"‘He who sees Me in all things and sees all things in Me, never becomes departed from Me. Nor am I lost to him’. (Gita 6.30) And a subsequent verse: ‘He who judges pleasure and pain in others by the same standard as he applies to himself, that yogi is the highest’."

"High birth cannot be a certificate for a person of no character. But persons with good character can distinguish themselves irrespective of low birth."

"The literature of India makes us acquainted with a great nation of past ages, which grasped every branch of knowledge, and which will always occupy a distinguished place in the history of the civilization of mankind."

"It has now become very clear to me that the Scandinavian, Egyptian, Greek, Central Asiatic, German and Slavonic gods were nearly all ... born in prehistoric India."

"But the evidence of her past glories lies in her literature. What people in all the world can boast of such a literature, which, were the Sanscrit less difficult, would be more studied than now? Hitherto the general public has had to rely for information on a few scholars who, notwithstanding their great learning and trustworthiness, are unequal to the task of translating and commenting upon more than a few books out of the almost countless number that, notwithstanding the vandalism of the missionaries, are still left to swell the mighty volume of Sanscrit literature."

"We are constrained to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy."

"India has created a special momentum in world history as a country to be searched for."

"India as a land of Desire formed an essential element in general history. From the most ancient times downwards, all nations have directed their wishes and longings to gaining access to the treasures of this land of marvels, the most costly which the earth presents, treasures of nature - pearls, diamonds, perfumes, rose essences, lions, elephants, etc. - as also treasures of wisdom. The way by which these treasures have passed to the West has at all times been a matter of world historical importance bound up with the fate of nations."

"Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, Herzliebchen, trag' ich dich fort, Fort nach den Fluren des Ganges, Dort weiß ich den schönsten Ort."

"The bramins have formed their people to such a degree of gentleness, courtesy, temperance and chastity, or at least have so confirmed them in these virtues, that Europeans frequently appear, on comparison with them, as beastly, drunken or mad. In their air and language they are unconstrainedly elegant; in their behaviour, friendly; in their persons, clean; in their way of life, simple and harmless ... they are not destitute of knowledge, still less of quiet industry or nicely imitative art; even the lowest castes learn reading, writing and arithmetic. . . ."

"The Hindus are the gentlest branch of humanity. They do not with pleasure offend anything that lives; they honor that which gives life and nourish themselves with the most inno¬ cent of foods, milk, rice, the fruits of the trees, the healthy herbs which their motherland dispenses . . . Moderation and calm, a soft feeling and a silent depth of the soul characterize their work and their pleasure, their morals and mythology, their arts and even their endurance under the most extreme yoke of humanity."

"The mythology, as well as the cosmogony of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, were borrowed from the doctrines of the Brahmins."

"India is the world’s cradle : thence it is that the common mother in sending forth her children, even to the utmost west has, in unfading testimony of our origin bequeathed us the legacy of her language, her laws, her morale, her literature and her religion."

"The culture of the Indians, as is known, almost certainly came from Tibet, just as all our arts like agriculture, numbers, the game of chess, etc., seem to have come from India."

"[Hindu philosophy] is the Ocean, we are but its clouds.... The key to everything is in India."

"Thanks to the labors of a science which is comparatively recent, and more especially to the researches of the students of Hindu and Egyptian antiquities, it is very much easier today than it was not so long ago to discover the source, to ascend the course and unravel the underground network of that great mysterious river which since the beginning of history has been flowing beneath all the religions, all the faiths, and all the philosophies: in a word, beneath all the visible and everyday manifestations of human thought. It is now hardly to be contested that this source is to be found in ancient India. Thence in all probability the sacred teaching spread into Egypt, found its way to ancient Persia and Chaldea, permeated the Hebrew race, and crept into Greece and the north of Europe, finally reaching China and even America."

"It will no longer remain to be doubted that the priests of Egypt and the sages of Greece have drawn directly from the original well of India; that only Brahmanism can provide those fragments of their teaching which have come down to us with the clarity which they do not possess."

"[From India emanated] "a torrent of light and the flow of reason and Right"... At its starting point, man arose in India, the birthplace of races and of religions, the womb of the world."

"The year 1863 will remain cherished and blessed. It was the first time I could read India’s great sacred poem, the divine Ramayana.... This great stream of poetry carries away the bitter leaven left behind by time and purifies us. Whoever has his heart dried up, let him drench it in the Ramayana. Whoever has lost and wept, let him find in it a soothing softness and Nature’s compassion. Whoever has done too much, willed too much, let him drink a long draught of life and youth from this deep chalice...."

"Everything is narrow in the Occident. Greece is small — I stifle. Judea is dry — I pant. Let me look a little towards lofty Asia, towards the deep Orient. There I find my immense poem, vast as India’s seas, blessed and made golden by the sun, a book of divine harmony in which nothing jars. There reigns a lovable peace, and even in the midst of battle, an infinite softness, an unbounded fraternity extending to all that lives, a bottomless and shoreless ocean of love, piety, clemency. I have found what I was looking for: the bible of kindness. Great poem, receive me!… Let me plunge into it! It is the sea of milk."

"If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India."

"There’s a huge public relations campaign here. Many of our friends in the other party, and including, I must say, some of the nuts in our own party, soft-heads, have jumped on, have completely bought the Indian line. And India has a very great propaganda line."

"In India I found a race of mortals living upon the Earth, but not adhering to it. Inhabiting cities, but not being fixed to them, possessing everything but possessed by nothing."

"Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans, the idealism of reason, as it is set forth by Greek philosophers, appears, in comparison with the abundant light and vigour of Oriental idealism, like a feeble Promethean spark in the full flood of heavenly glory of the noonday sun—faltering and feeble, and ever ready to be extinguished."

"Here is the actual source of all languages, all the thoughts and poems of the human spirit; everything, everything without exception comes from India."

"I believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century."

"And O! how the mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted Jewish superstition ! It is the most profitable and elevating reading which is possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death."

"India is the land of religions, cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition. The land that all men desire to see and having seen once even by a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of the rest of the globe combined."

"Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India."

"I am convinced that everything—astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.—comes to us from the banks of the Ganges."

"It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmans' science not been been long established in Europe."

"It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity."

"He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant’s trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot’s bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kókila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawáka; and compounding all these together he made woman, and gave her to man."

"Woman is the crowning excellence of God's creation, the shadow of the gods. Man the god's creation only. Woman is light, man is shadow. Could the light do without the shadow?"

"The Mahometan Women do not appear in publick, except only the vulgar Sort, and the leud Ones. They cover their Heads, but the Hair hangs down behind in several Tresses. Many of them bore their Noses to wear a Gold Ring set with Stones."

"Nevertheless, woman enjoyed far greater freedom in the Vedic period than in later India. She had more to say in the choice of her mate than the forms of marriage might suggest. She appeared freely at feasts and dances, and joined with men in religious sacrifice. She could study, and might, like Gargi, engage in philosophic disputation. If she was left a widow there were no restrictions upon her remarriage. In the Heroic Age woman seems to have lost something of this liberty."

"If devotion to the fair sex be admitted as a criterion of civilization, the Rajpoot must rank high. His susceptibility is extreme, and fires at the slightest offense to female delicacy, which he never forgives."

"Take the case of the Thaaru women in the Tarai region as described by Hugh and Colleen Gantzer. “Once upon a time… a group of beautiful Sisodia Rajput princesses were spirited out of their kingdom by their loving father. Though the old man was prepared to die in the battlefield, with all honour, he could not bear the thought of all his beautiful daughters dying in the fiery self-immolation pit of Jauhar. He therefore summoned some of his bravest old retainers, charged them with the task of guarding the princesses, gave them a posse of Bhil warriors, and sent them to the safety of a remote Himalayan kingdom with which he had ties of blood. Sadly, on their arduous journey the old retainers succumbed to malaria... Eventually when the last old Rajput male had died, the princesses realised that they could go no further… They were young women, full of life. They didn’t want to die. So they made an agreement with their Bhils that they would settle down there, in a clearing in the fertile Tarai, marry them but on one condition. From that day on their female descendants would always be superior to their males... they would not serve them. And that is the way it still is. … These women were not the docile, subservient (type) we had often encountered in northern Indian villages: they were proud (and) independent…”"

"War being a special privilege of the martial classes, harassment of the civilian population during military operations was considered a serious lapse from the code of honour. The high regard which all Kshatriyas had for the chastity of women, also ruled out abduction as an incident of war."

"I do not know any book that says as many kind and delicate things to females as in the law book of Manu; these old men and saints have a way of minding their manners in front of women that has perhaps never been surpassed."

"Orme, along with many others, affirms that “nature seems to have showered beauty on the fairer sex throughout Hindustan with a more lavish hand than in most other countries.”"

"Women were held in higher respect in India than in other ancient countries, and the Epics and old literature of India assign a higher position to them than the epics and literature of ancient Greece. Hindu women enjoyed some rights of property from the Vedic Age, took a share in social and religious rites, and were sometimes distinguished by their learning. The absolute seclusion of women in India was unknown in ancient times."

"In these modern days there is a greater impetus towards higher education on the European lines, and the trend of opinion is strong towards women getting this higher education. Of course, there are some people in India who do not want it, but those who do want it carried the day. It is a strange fact that Oxford and Cambridge are closed to women today, so are Harvard and Yale; but Calcutta University opened its doors to women more than twenty years ago."

"To the women of this country... I would say exactly what I say to the men. Believe in India and in our Indian faith. Be strong and hopeful and unashamed, and remember that with something to take, Hindus have immeasurably more to give than any other people in the world."

"Akbar had prohibited enslavement and sale of women and children of peasants who had defaulted in payment of revenue. He knew, as Abul Fazl says, that many evil-hearted and vicious men either because of ill-founded suspicion or sheer greed, used to proceed to villages and mahals and sack them."

"In this background, it would be an unremitting task both in volume and repetition to give all anecdotes, facts and figures of enslavement and concubinage of captive women in the central and provincial kingdoms and independent Muslim states found mentioned in the chronicles. This would only lead to repetition resulting in the book becoming bulky."

"In 1635 AD, Shah Jahan’s soldiers captured some ladies of the royal Bundela family after Jujhar Singh and his sons failed to kill them in the time-honoured Rajput tradition. In the words of Jadunath Sarkar, “Mothers and daughters of kings, they were robbed of their religion and forced to lead the infamous life of the Mughal harem.”"

"The Hindus of this region had been victims of Muslim high-handedness for a long time, particularly in respect of their women. Murshid Qulî Khãn, the faujdãr of Mathura who died in 1638, was notorious for seizing “all their most beautiful women” and forcing them into his harem. “On the birthday of Krishna,” narrates Ma’sîr-ul-Umara, “a vast gathering of Hindu men and women takes place at Govardhan on the Jumna opposite Mathura. The Khan, painting his forehead and wearing dhoti like a Hindu, used to walk up and down in the crowd. Whenever he saw a woman whose beauty filled even the moon with envy, he snatched her away like a wolf pouncing upon a flock, and placing her in the boat which his men kept ready on the bank, he sped to Agra. The Hindu [for shame] never divulged what had happened to his daughter.”"

"In the preceding pages it has been seen how women and children were special targets for enslavement throughout the medieval period, that is, during Muslim invasions and Muslim rule. Captive children of both sexes grew up as Muslims and served the sultans, nobles and men of means in various captives. Enslavement of young women was also due to many reasons; their being sex objects was the primary consideration and hence concentration on their captivity..... Forcible marriages, euphemistically called matrimonial alliances, were common throughout the medieval period. Only some of them find mention in Muslim chronicles with their bitter details...It is therefore no wonder that from the day the Muslim invaders marched into India to the time when their political power declined, women were systematically captured and enslaved throughout the length and breadth of the country."

"Guru Nanak proceeds to describe how the oppressors shaved off the maidens, their ‘heads with braided hair, with vermilion marks in the parting’; how ‘their throats were choked with dust’; how they were cast out of their palatial homes, unable now to sit even in the neighbourhood of their homes; how those who had come to the homes of their husbands in palanquins, decorated with ivory, who lived in the lap of luxury, had been tied with ropes around their necks; how their pearl strings had been shattered; how the very beauty that was their jewel had now become their enemy – ordered to dishonour them, the soldiers had carried them off. ‘Since Babar’s rule has been proclaimed,’ Guru Nanak wrote, ‘even the princes have no food to eat.’ Their sacred squares shattered, where will the Hindu women bathe, how will they worship? the Guru lamented. Dishonoured, how may they now apply the tilak on their foreheads? Some return home to inquire about the safety of their loved ones. Others are cursed to sit and cry out in pain."

"The Hindu was taxed to the extent of half the produce of his land... No gold or silver, not even the betelnut, so cheering and stimulative to pleasure, was to be seen in a Hindu house, and the wives of the impoverished native officials were reduced to taking service in Muslim families. Revenue officers came to be regarded as more deadly than the plague; and to be a government clerk was disgrace worse than death, in so much that no Hindu would marry his daughter to such a man."

"(The soldier) takes into custody all the women of the enemy’s city… Wherever they happened to pass in that very place the ladies of the Raja’s house began to be sold in the market. They used to set fire to the villages. They turned out the women (from their homes) and killed the children. Loot was their (source of) income. They subsisted on that. Neither did they have pity for the weak nor did they fear the strong… They had nothing to do with righteousness… They never kept their promise… They were neither desirous of good name, not did they fear bad name…”"

"Having subjugated Khuraasaan, Babar terrified Hindustaan So that blame does not come on Him, the Creator has sent the Mughal as the messenger of death So great was the slaughter, such the agony of the people, even then You felt no compassion, Lord? If some powerful man strikes another, one feels no grief But when a powerful tiger slaughters a flock of helpless sheep, its master must answer This jewel of a country has been laid waste and defiled by dogs, so much so that no one pays heed even to the dead… Guru Nanak proceeds to describe how the oppressors shaved off the maidens, their ‘heads with braided hair, with vermillion marks in the parting’; how ‘their throats were choked with dust’; how they were cast out of their palatial homes, unable now to sit even in the neighbourhood of their homes; how those who had come to the homes of their husbands in palanquins, decorated with ivory, who lived in the lap of luxury, had been tied with ropes around their necks; how their pearl strings had been shattered; how the very beauty that was their jewel had now become their enemy – ordered to dishonour them, the soldiers had carried them off. ‘Since Babar’s rule has been proclaimed,’ Guru Nanak wrote, ‘even the princes have no food to eat.’"

"Writing about the days of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51), Shihabuddin al-Umari writes: "The sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon the infidels... Every day thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners .... (that) the value at Delhi of a young slave girl, for domestic service, does not exceed eight tankahs. Those who are deemed fit to fill the parts of domestic and concubine sell for about fifteen tankahs. In other cities prices are still lower..." Umari continues, "but still, in spite of low prices of slaves, 20000 tankahs, and even more, are paid for young Indian girls. I inquired the reason... and was told that these young girls are remarkable for their beauty, and the grace of their manners.""

"But when the Muhammedan invaders ... conquered the disorganised Hindu hosts, and Hindu young women began to become a prey to the lust of some of the conquerors, the custom of early marriage and the unnatural purdah were introduced by the degenerate Hindus of northern India as refuge against the inroads of Muslim Ghazis in Hindu homes."

"...in any view, abduction of Hindu women by the Muslims and their continued loss to the Hindu community, so far as it affects the growth of the Hindus is a matter which cannot be neglected any longer without serious consequences."

"At Mansera and some other places (N.W.F.P.) there are regular camps where Hindu girls are being sold."

"At the height of the riots, during August and September, when the majority of rapes and abductions occurred, there was almost no limit to the vehemence of the mobs. Throughout the chaos, both planned and random abductions of women and girls were carried out, particularly in situations in which large number of refugees — disoriented and inadequately protected — had assembled or were on the move. For example, Kirpal Singh records that two trains crossed on the Kamoke railway line, one carrying 260 refugees and the other carrying Pakistan Army soldiers. After the latter realized that the former was carrying Hindu refugees, it was attacked. Most of the men were killed and 50 women and girls were forcibly taken by the soldiers. Similarly, in East Bengal, the Ansars, a paramilitary force responsible for the safety of the citizens also perpetrated attacks and abducted Hindu women. One of my respondents was on one of the trains leaving Pakistan and recalled how she hid in a toilet. ... In the confusion that followed, while she was fortunate enough to avoid being abducted, she witnessed many girls and women being taken from the trains. ... Describing the massacres of refugees in Kamoke, Gujranwala district, an Indian official wrote, the most ignoble feature of the tragedy was the distribution of young girls amongst the members of the Police Force, the National Guards (an Islamo-fascist organization-AN) and the local goondas. The Station House Officer Dilder Hussain collected the victims in an open space near Kamoke Railway Station and gave a free hand to the mob. After the massacre was over, the girls were distributed like sweets ... Later on as a result of the efforts of the Liasion Agency and the East Punjab Police some girls were recovered from Kamoke, Eminabad and some surrounding villages ... A list of at least 70 untraced girls abducted from the Kamoke train was handed over [to] the Police by District Liasion Officer ... It is feared that most of these girls had been sold or taken underground."

"[When the Jihadist tribal Mujahidin raided Kashmir in 1947, the girls abducted by the Jihadists] 'were exhibited in the bazaars of Peshawar and Bannu, thereby enticing Pathans towards Kashmir. Many were subjected to unmentionable indignities.'"

"Shree Krishna’s army did not forsake their kinswomen, simply because they were forcibly polluted and violated — a dastardly thought which he never entertained for a minute. On the contrary Shree Krishna as the Bhoopati, the Lord of the whole Earth, brought all those sixteen thousand or more women to his kingdom, rehabilitated them honourably and took upon himself the responsibility of feeding and protecting them. This very act of Krishna, as the Bhoopati, has been fantastically construed by the writers of the Puranas as to describe him the husband of those thousands of women. He was later thought to have married all of them’."

"With this same shameless religious fanaticism the aggressive Muslims of those times considered it their highly religious duty to carry away forcibly the women of the enemy side, as if they were commonplace property to ravish them, to pollute them and to distribute them to all and sundry, from the Sultan to the common soldier and to absorb them completely in their fold. This was considered a noble act which increased their number."

"With the Muslim conquest the position of Indian women suffered a set-back. After the fall of every city, and sometimes even in times of peace, women suffered every kind of privation. Historians like Ziyauddin Barani and Shams Siraj ‘Afif hint at it, while Ibn Battiita’s narrative makes revolting reading. As a bulwark against these humiliations Jauhar and Sati, already prevalent in Hindu society, began to be practised on a large scale in times of war. In times of peace Parda (seclusion) and child-marriage were considered to be good safeguards. The custom of ghiinghat among Hindus is described by Vidyapati and Malik Muhammad Jaisi, but the ‘‘more developed form of Parda, with its elaborate code of tules, came into existence almost from the beginning of the Muslim tule in Hindustan’’. Life of women was restricted in Muslim society; Firdz Tughlaq and Sikandar Lodi forbade the pilgrimage of women to the tomb of saints."

"Nature seems to have showered beauty on their fairer sex throughout Indostan, with a more lavish hand than in most other countries. They are all, without exception, fit to be married before thirteen, and wrinkled before thirty – flowers of too short a duration not to be delicate; and too delicate to last long. Segregated from the company of the other sex, and strangers to the ideas of attracting attention, they are only the handsomer for this ignorance; as we see in them; beauty in the noble simplicity of nature. Hints have already been given of their physiognomy: their skins are of a polish and softness beyond that of all their rivals on the globe: a statuary would not succeed better in Greece itself, in his pursuit of the Grecian form; and although in the men he would find nothing to furnish the ideas of the Farnesian Hercules, he would find in the women the finest hints of the Medicean Venus."

"In the exercise of the tongue, a female of Hindostan hath few equals; and if she hath ever followed a camp, I would pronounce her invincible on any ground in Europe. An English woman, educated at our most noted seminaries, and skilled in all the various compass of debate, will, perhaps, on some interesting occasion, maintain the contest for an hour, which then terminates in blows and victory. But an Indian dame, improved by a few campaigns, has been known to wage a colloquial war, without introducing one manual effort, for the space of three successive days; sleeping and eating at reasonable intervals. There is a fertility of imagination, a power of expression, inherent in the mind, and vocal ability, of an Asiatic, particularly a female one, which cannot be engendered in the cold head of an European: and there is an extent of language also peculiar to the East, which the limits of Western speech do not contain."

"There is a marked difference between the moral and social character of the Hindoo and the Mohammedan women of India. The Hindoo woman does not occupy that position in society which she is so eminently fitted to grace, and which is accorded to women in Europe and America; but she is by no means so degraded as is so frequently represented by travellers, who are apt to mistake the common street-woman with whom they are brought into contact for the wife and mother of an ordinary Hindoo home. It is difficult for a stranger to find out what an Indian woman is at home, though he may have encountered many a bedizened female in the streets which he takes for her. The influence of the Hindoo woman is seen and felt all through the history of India, and is very marked in the annals of British rule. Though the political changes, the invasion, and despotism of Mohammedan rule may have forced upon them the seclusion now so general, it is evident that they once occupied a very different position in society, from the testimony of their earliest writers and the dramatic representations of domestic life and manners still extant. One of the most startling facts is, that among the Asiatic rules of India who have heroically resisted foreign invasion the women of Hindostan have distinguished themselves almost as much as the men. Lakshmi Baiee, the queen of Jahnsee, held the entire British army in check for the space of twenty-four hours by her wonderful generalship, and she would probably have come off victorious if she had not been shot down by the enemy. After the battle Sir Hugh Rose, the English commander, declared that the best man on the enemy’s side was the brave queen Lakshmi Baiee. Another courageous and noble woman, Aus Khoor, was placed by the British government on the throne of Pattiala, an utterly disorganized and revolted state in the Panjaub. In less than one year she had by her wise and effective administration changed the whole condition of the country, subjugated the rebellious cities and villages, increased the revenues, and established order, security and peace everywhere. Alleah Baiee, the Mahratta queen of Malwah, devoted herself for the space of twenty years with unremitting assiduity to the happiness and welfare of her people, so that Hindoos, Buddhists, Jains, Parsees, and Mohammedans united in blessing her beneficent rule; and of so rare a modesty was this woman that she ordered a book which extolled her virtues to be destroyed, saying, ‘Could I have been so infamous as to neglect the welfare and happiness of my subjects?’"

"What great fault is there in women that has not been already committed by men? Men have outstripped women in impudence. Women are indeed superior to men in respect of merits. ... Being uniquely pure, women are never defiled."

"In the estimate of historian and epigraphist Chithra Madhavan, royal ladies “are seen actively participating in the sphere of religion and culture. ... It can be seen that many of them were extremely well-versed in the fine arts and also enjoyed an exalted position in their respective kingdoms as elsewhere in south India at that time.”"

"In the Gupta era, there is evidence that a woman could be a teacher; as historian U. N. Ghoshal puts it, “Girls of high families, as also those living in hermitages, read works on ancient history and legend, and were educated sufficiently to understand and even compose verses. ... The Amarakosa, a work of the Gupta Age, refers to words meaning female teachers (upadhyaya2 and upadhyayi) as well as female instructors of Vedic mantras (acharya*).”"

"There is a peculiar beauty in Indian women, whereby their face is covered with pure skin, with a slight, lovely blush, which is not just like the blush of health and vitality, but a finer blush, like a spiritual touch from within. The look of the eye and the position of the mouth, appear gentle, soft and relaxed – it is an almost unearthly beauty…"

"With many of my young (Hindu) male respondents from the Bajrang Dal, stories of rape were more like a fun story to share. The pleasure derived from storytelling was more visible when discussing the sexual degeneracy of Muslims."

"The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act violates India’s international obligations to prevent deprivation of citizenship on the basis of race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin as found in the and other human rights treaties that India has ratified. The 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities calls on governments to protect the existence and identity of religious minorities within their territories and to adopt the appropriate measures to achieve this end. Governments are obligated to ensure that people belonging to , including , may exercise their human rights without discrimination and in full . Governments also have an obligation to ensure . To the extent that the process has a disproportionately harmful impact on the citizenship rights of women and girls, it also violates the ."

"As the legacy of this scenario, Indian girls are still being sold to West Asian nationals as wives, concubines and slave girls. For example, all the leading Indian newspapers like The Indian Express, The Hindustan Times and The Times of India of 4 August 1991, flashed the news of a sixty year old “toothless” Arab national Yahiya H. M. Al Sagish “marrying” a 10-11 year old Ameena of Hyderabad after paying her father Rs. 6000, and attempting to take her out of the country. Al Sagish has been taken into police custody and the case is in the law-court now. Mr. I. U. Khan has “pointed out that no offence could be made out against his client as he had acted in accordance with the Shariat laws. He said that since this case related to the Muslim personal law which permitted marriage with girls who had attained Puberty (described as over 9 years of age), Al Sagish could not be tried under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Besides Ameena’s parents had not complained.” (Times of India, 14 August 1991). But this is not an isolated case. I was in Hyderabad for about four years, 1979-1983. There I learnt that such “marriages” are common. There are regular agents and touts who arrange them. Poor parents of girls are handsomely paid by foreign Muslims for such arrangements. Every time that I happened to go to the Hyderabad Airlines office or the Airport (which was about at least once a month), I found bunches of old bridegrooms in Arab attire accompanied by young girls, often little girl brides. “A rough estimate indicated that as many as 8000 such marriages were solemnised during the past one decade in Hyderabad alone.” (Indian Express Magazine, 18 August 1991). In short, the sex slave-trade is still flourishing not only in Hyderabad but in many other cities of India after the medieval tradition."

"On November 20, the issued a notification allowing women to work night shifts (7 p.m. to 6 a.m.) in all factories registered under the Factories Act, 1948. [...] In principle, this is a welcome move. However, several concerns have been voiced by women garment workers who are estimated to constitute over 90% of the five lakh garment workers in Karnataka (according to data by Asia Floor Wage Alliance, a global coalition of trade unions). The amendment suggests that night shifts for women will only be allowed if the employer ensures adequate safeguards concerning occupational safety and health, protection of dignity and honour, and transportation from the factory premises to points nearest to the worker’s residence. The amendment stipulates 24 points related to occupational rules and regulations, most of which have been in existence for years. Yet, women workers fear that when there is no safety or dignity in the workplace even during daytime, how will employers ensure all this during night shifts? [...] In a sector where there is systemic failure and worker-management relations are turbulent, putting the onus of worker safety and security in the hands of the management alone can be risky. Moreover, it is well-known that in supply chains the brands call the shots. Involving them in discussions on worker dignity and equality is important. Omitting workers and trade unions from discussions about the amendment is also seen by the workers as a short-sighted measure. Women garment workers are concerned that while the amendment has stipulated many ‘new’ guidelines amidst the plethora of unaddressed concerns, allowing night shifts would only extend daytime exploitation."

"The failure to adopt a Uniform civil code [has the effect that] Muslim women suffer because they do not have an equal right of inheritance, because they cannot easily obtain a divorce, because they can be divorced by their husband at their whim or caprice."

"In the broadest strokes, the Times’ coverage of India is almost Orientalist—it’s almost as if it’s a backward place characterised by nationalism, violence, sexual assault. I read in an article somewhere, where they just flatly stated that there’s a rampant rape culture in India. And I was like, what? So, I actually started to look at the statistics to see what they meant. And you look at the statistics, and they’re a fraction of cases from what the US or Western Europe experiences. How can you make an assertion like that when the statistics are not even close to being there? So that was what I wanted to understand. I think on the broad level India (is portrayed as) being this nationalist kind of bully. And I think on a more specific level, it’s an anti Hindu approach... So you think to yourself why is there this division in how they cover China and how they cover India? Why is one being shown as this sort of progressive place that has managed to conquer a pandemic and the other this backward place characterised by funeral pyres and rape—and that’s what I’m trying to understand."

"“Where big violence is so common, it is no surprise that gender violence is hardly a priority issue,” explained Mantasha Rashid, founder of Kashmir Women’s Collective, a trust that provides support under a single window to survivors of gender-based violence. “The rape and assault you’re referring to is akin to collateral damage. Women are caught in the crossfire in any conflict region, and the body of the enemy’s woman is seen as war booty by all the warring sides.”... “I don’t really want to go out and say that Kashmiri society is particularly flawed or patriarchal because that can be misinterpreted,” Rashid of the Kashmir Women’s Collective said. “Whenever we speak about Kashmir one has to choose their words very carefully or else the discourse is hijacked by the bigger political narrative.”"

""Did Nirbhaya really have go to watch a movie at 11 in the night with her friend? Take the Shakti Mills gang rape case. Why did the victim go to such an isolated spot at 6 pm?" Mirje asked at a gathering of the NCP women's wing in Nagpur. "We have to be careful. We have to ask ourselves, where am I going, with whom am I going, what am I going for, do I really need to go to that place," she added."

"For a society in line with our constitutional vision, it is for the Muslim community to introspect and preach to their men to respect women from other communities. This theological validation of considering non-Muslim women as maal-i-ganimat (free war booty) is not acceptable in modern Indian society."

"Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benaras and other places."

"National education cannot be defined briefly in one or two sentences, but we may describe it tentatively as the education which starting with the past and making full use of the present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut off the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantage of the present is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her the best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines...."

"The living spirit of the demand for national education no more requires a return to the astronomy and mathematics of Bhaskara or the forms of the system of Nalanda than the living spirit of Swadeshi a return from railway and motor traction to the ancient chariot and the bullock-cart.... It is the spirit, the living and vital issue that we have to do with, and there the question is not between modernism and antiquity, but between an imported civilisation and the greater possibilities of the Indian mind and nature, not between the present and the past, but between the present and the future. It is not a return to the fifth century but an initiation of the centuries to come, not a reversion but a break forward away from a present artificial falsity to her own greater innate potentialities that is demanded by the soul, by the Shakti of India.... A language, Sanskrit or another, should be acquired by whatever method is most natural, efficient and stimulating to the mind and we need not cling there to any past or present manner of teaching: but the vital question is how we are to learn and make use of Sanskrit and the indigenous languages so as to get to the heart and intimate sense of our own culture and establish a vivid continuity between the still living power of our past and the yet uncreated power of our future, and how we are to learn and use English or any other foreign tongue so as to know helpfully the life, ideas and culture of other countries and establish our right relations with the world around us. This is the aim and principle of a true national education, not, certainly, to ignore modern truth and knowledge, but to take our foundation on our own being, our own mind, our own spirit.... The scientific, rationalistic, industrial, pseudo-democratic civilisation of the West is now in process of dissolution and it would be a lunatic absurdity for us at this moment to build blindly on that sinking foundation. When the most advanced minds of the occident are beginning to turn in this red evening of the West for the hope of a new and more spiritual civilisation to the genius of Asia, it would be strange if we could think of nothing better than to cast away our own self and potentialities and put our trust in the dissolving and moribund past of Europe."

"[Is the system in England different from that introduced in India?] Yes, [in India] they want only clerks and the education is intended for nothing else."

"There is a strange idea prevalent that by merely teaching the dogmas of religion children can be made pious and moral. This is an European error, and its practice either leads to mechanical acceptance of a creed having no effect on the inner and little on the outer life, or it creates the fanatic, the pietist, the ritualist or the unctuous hypocrite. Religion has to be lived, not learned as a creed. ... But whether distinct teaching in any form of religion is imparted or not, the essence of religion, to live for God, for humanity, for country, for others and for oneself in these, must be made the ideal in every school which calls itself national. It is this spirit of Hinduism pervading our schools which — far more than the teaching of Indian subjects, the use of Indian methods or formal instruction in Hindu beliefs and Hindu scriptures — should be the essence of Nationalism in our schools distinguishing them from all others."

"The economy with which children are taught to write in the native schools, and the system by which the more advanced scholars are caused to teach the less advanced, and at the same time to confirm their own knowledge is certainly admirable, and well deserves the imitation it has received in England."

"there are multitudes who cannot even avail themselves of the advantages ... I am sorry to state, that this is ascribable to the gradual but general impoverishment of the country. The means of the manufacturing classes have been of late years greatly diminished by the introduction of our own English manufactures in lieu of the Indian cotton fabrics. The removal of many of our troops from our own territories to the distant frontiers of our newly subsidized allies has also, of late years, affected the demand for grain; the transfer of the capital of the country from the native government and their officers, who liberally expended it in India, to Europeans, restricted by law from employing it even temporarily in India, and daily draining it from the land, has likewise tended to this effect, which has not been alleviated by a less rigid enforcement of the revenue due to the State. The greater part of the middling and lower classes of the people are now unable to defray the expenses incident upon the education of their offspring, while their necessities require the assistance of their children as soon as their tender limbs are capable of the smallest labour."

"It cannot have escaped the government that of nearly a million of souls in this District, not 7,000 are now at school, a proportion which exhibits but too strongly the result above stated. In many villages where formerly there were schools, there are now none and in many others where there were large schools, now only a few children of the most opulent are taught, others being unable from poverty to attend, or to pay what is demanded."

"Such is the state in this District of the various schools in which reading, writing and arithmetic are taught in the vernacular dialects of the country, as has been always usual in India, by teachers who are paid by their schools.... But learning, though it may proudly decline to sell its stores, has never flourished in any country except under the encouragement of the ruling power, and the countenance and support once given to science in this part of India has long been withheld. ... Of the 533 institutions for education now existing in this District, I am ashamed to say not one now derives any support from the State. ... There is no doubt, that in former times, especially under the Hindoo Governments, very large grants, both in money and in land, were issued for the support of learning. * *"

"Considerable alienations of revenue, which formerly did honour to the State, by upholding and encouraging learning, have deteriorated under our rule into the means of supporting ignorance; whilst science, deserted by the powerful aid she formerly received from government has often been reduced to beg her scanty and uncertain meal from the chance benevolence of charitable individuals; and it would be difficult to point out any period in the history of India when she stood more in need..."

"The Indian Constitution has in effect given less rights to the Hindus ... in several matters. Under Article 30 of the Constitution, minorities have got the most precious right of running educational institutions in accordance with their own cultures and values, but Hindus have been denied this right. ... You cannot find such a perverse provision in the constitution of any independent nation of the world. ... If anybody wants to run in India today a school that imparts education in Islamic or Christian theology, the Central and State Governments will be giving it grants, maybe they would even meet the entire expenses of the school.... But start a school where you want to educate ... about Hindu Dharma and culture ... the burden of funding your school will have to be shouldered by ... voluntary organizations."

"A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West, the past or the future. The greatest danger for India is the loss of her spiritual integrity. Of all Indian problems the educational is the most difficult and most tragic."

"‘Freedom to manage religious affairs subject to public order, morality and health’, and that ‘every religious denomination or any section thereof shall have the right to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes; to manage its own affairs in matters of religion; to own and acquire movable and immovable property; and to administer such property in accordance with law.’"

"‘1. No religion instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of State funds. 2. Nothing in clause 1 shall apply to an educational institution which is administered by the State but has been established under any endowment or trust which requires that religious instruction shall be imparted in such institution. 3. No person attending any educational institution recognised by the State or receiving aid out of State funds shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imparted in such institution or to attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution or in any premises attached thereto unless such person or, if such person is a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto Cultural and Educational Rights."

"‘1. All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. 1A. In making any law providing for the compulsory acquisition of any property of an educational institution established and administered by a minority, referred to in clause 1, the State shall ensure that the amount fixed determined by or under such law for the acquisition of such property is such as would not restrict or abrogate the right guaranteed under that clause. 2. The state shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language.’"

"‘Nothing in this article or in sub-clause (g) of clause (1) of Article 19 shall prevent the State from making any special provision, by law, for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in so far as such special provisions relate to their admission to educational institutions including private educational institutions, whether aided or unaided by the State, other than the minority educational institutions referred to in clause 1 of Article 30.’"

"There is a sense of widespread neglect and decay in the field of indigenous education within a few decades after the onset of British rule. (...) The conclusion that the decay noticed in the early 19th century and more so in subsequent decades originated with European supremacy in India, therefore, seems inescapable. The 1769-70 famine in Bengal (when, according to British record, one-third of the population actually perished), may be taken as a mere forerunner of what was to come. (...) During the latter part of the 19th century, impressions of decay, decline and deprivation began to agitate the mind of the Indian people. Such impressions no doubt resulted from concrete personal, parental and social experience of what had gone before. They were, perhaps, somewhat exaggerated at times. By 1900, it had become general Indian belief that the country had been decimated by British rule in all possible ways; that not only had it become impoverished, but it had been degraded to the furthest possible extent; that the people of India had been cheated of most of what they had; that their customs and manners were ridiculed, and that the infrastructure of their society mostly eroded. One of the statements which thus came up was that the ignorance and illiteracy in India was caused by British rule; and, conversely, that at the beginning of British political dominance, India had had extensive education, learning and literacy. By 1930, much had been written on this point in the same manner as had been written on the deliberate destruction of Indian crafts and industry, and the impoverishment of the Indian countryside."

"Shri Dharampal has documented from old British archives, particularly those in Madras, that the indigenous system of education compared more than favourably with the system obtaining in England at about the same time. The Indian system was admittedly in a state of decay when it was surveyed by the British Collectors in Bengal, Bombay and Madras. Yet, as the data brought up by them proved conclusively, the Indian system was better than the English in terms of (1) the number of schools and colleges proportionately to the population, (2) the number of students attending these institutions, (3) the duration of time spent in school by the students, (4) the quality of teachers, (5) the diligence as well as intelligence of the students, (6) the financial support needed to see the students through school and college, (7) the high percentage of lower class (Sudra and other castes) students attending these schools as compared to the upper class (Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaisya) students, and (8) in terms of subjects taught."

"Every Hindu village had its schoolmaster, supported out of the public funds; in Bengal alone, before the coming of the British, there were some eighty thousand native schools one to every four hundred population. The percentage of literacy under Ashoka was apparently higher than in India today. Children went to the village school from September to February, entering at the age of five and leaving at the age of eight. Instruction was chiefly of a religious character, no matter what the subject; rote memorizing was the usual method, and the Vedas were the inevitable text. The three R's were included, but were not the main business of education; character was rated above intellect, and discipline was the essence of schooling. We do not hear of flogging, or of other severe measures; but we find that stress was laid above all upon the formation of wholesome and proper habits of life. At the age of eight the pupil passed to the more formal care of a Guru, or personal teacher and guide, with whom the student was to live, preferably till he was twenty. Services, sometimes menial, were required of him, and he was pledged to continence, modesty, cleanliness, and a meatless diet. Instruction was now given him in the "Five Sbastras" or sciences: grammar, arts and crafts, medicine, logic, and philosophy. Finally he was sent out into the world with the wise admonition that education came only one-fourth from the teacher, one-fourth from private study, one-fourth from one's fel- lows, and one-fourth from life. From his Guru the student might pass, about the age of sixteen, to one of the great universities that were the glory of ancient and medieval India: Benares, Taxila, Vidarbha, Ajanta, Ujjain, or Nalanda."

"Macaulay's policy was implemented and became a resounding success. The pre-Macaulayan vernacular system of education was destroyed, even though British surveys had found it more effective and more democratic than the then-existing education system in Britain. The rivalling educationist party, the so-called Orientalists, had proposed a Sanskrit-based system of education, in which Indian graduates would not have been as estranged from their mother civilization as they became through English education, and in which they could have selectively adopted the useful elements of Western modernity, more or less the way Japan modernized itself."

"Especially the CPM government in West Bengal has been ruthlessly using the constitutional discrimination against Hindu schools for justifying take-overs. But have these organizations appealed to Hindu society to come to their rescue? Have they launched, or asked politicians to launch, a campaign to end this discrimination ? Apparently they have absolutely no confidence in the willingness of Hindu politicians to take up even an impeccably justified Hindu cause. So, I think Hindu politicians should make this their number one issue. Article 30 is far more unjust and harmful than Article 370 which gives a special status to Kashmir. You can better lose that piece of territory than to lose your next generations. It is also a good exercise in separating the genuine secularists from the Hindu-baiters. The demand for equality between all religions in education merely seeks the abrogation of an injustice against the Hindus, so it cannot be construed as directed against the minorities. It wants to stop a blatant case of discrimination on the basis of religion, so everyone who comes out in support of the present form of Article 30, will stand exposed as a supporter of communal discrimination. It is truly a watershed issue. .... A religious community is only a lawful category in strictly religious matters. In these, there is already discrimination against the Hindus. The state governments can (and do, as recently in Kerala) take over the management of Hindu temples, not of minority places of worship. They can (and do, as in West Bengal) take over school started by Hindu organizations. Apart from the secular aspects of education, there is religious discrimination against the Hindus in that the imparting of Hindus tradition is hampered, as well as the creation of a Hindu atmosphere in a school (e.g. through the selective recruitment of teachers, to which the minority schools are fully entitled). Both in the letter and spirit of the Constitution and in actual practice, Hindus as a religious community are discriminated against in matters of temples management and education. These discriminations are at least partly encroachments on the exercise n the exercise of the Hindus' constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. Just imagine what rhetoric and agitation would be lunched if such discriminations had applied to the minorities."

"But the negationists are not satisfied with seeing their own version of the facts being repeated in more and more books and papers. They also want to prevent other versions from reaching the public. Therefore, in 1982 the National Council of Educational Research and Training issued a directive for the rewriting of schoolbooks. Among other things, it stipulated that: "Characterization of the medieval period as a time of conflict between Hindus and Muslims is forbidden." Under Marxist pressure, negationism has become India's official policy. (...)"

"For those unfamiliar with modern Indian history: the Marxists, already pushy for acquiring as much power in the institutions as they could grab, were handed a near-monopoly on institutional power in India's academic and educational sector by Indira Gandhi ca. 1970. Involved in an intra-Congress power struggle, she needed the help of the Left. Her confidants P.N. Haksar and Nurul Hasan packed the institutions with Marxists, card-carrying or otherwise. When, during the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77), her Communist Party allies threatened to become too powerful, she and her son Sanjay removed them from key political positions but, in a typical instance of politicians' short-sightedness, they left the Marxists? hold on the cultural sector intact. In the good old Soviet tradition, they at once set out to falsify history and propagate their own version through the official textbooks. After coming to power in 1998, the BJP-dominated government has made a half-hearted and not always very competent attempt to effect glasnost (openness, transparency) at least in the history textbooks. This led the Marxists to start a furious hate campaign against the so-called 'saffronization' of history."

"Even on the educational front, the impact of British reforms was not altogether beneficial. Early British reports on native education, prepared in anticipation of the Macaulayite policy, showed that it had been far more accessible for low-caste pupils than is generally thought. In fact, they served to a larger proportion of India's lower classes than the percentage of the British proletariat reached by British schools at the time. And of course, they taught many more low-caste children than the elitist and expensive English schools would ever do. For all we know, low-caste participation in education actually declined when the native education system was phased out."

"And all Indian secularists swear by the preservation of constitutional, legal and factual discriminations against the Hindu majority. (In case you have recently lived on another planet and don’t believe that there are such discriminations, one example: the Right to Education Act 2006, which imposes some costly duties on schools except minority schools, has led to the closure of hundreds of Hindu schools.) [...] ...the grim and determined passivity of the Modi government regarding specifically Hindu demands, such as the abolition of the blatantly anti-Hindu (so, communally partisan and hence anti-secular) Right to Education Act, which has forced hundreds of Hindu schools to close down. [...] Thus, subsidized schools can be Christian or Muslim, but not Hindu: in the latter case, either they get taken over by the state and secularized, or at best, they have to do without subsidies."

"The Churches as such are of course not investing all their money and manpower in Indian schools and hospitals as a matter of selfless service: they do want to gain from it, viz. a harvest of souls. The missionary network is willing to give, but just like the Devil, it wants your soul in return. Even in the elite schools where no direct proselytization is attempted, Hindu pupils are subtly encouraged towards skepticism of their own religion, and are also used as political pawns when Christian demands (e.g. reservations for Dalit Christians) are aired through pupils' demonstrations or school strikes. This way, Christian schools become a power tool rather than a service, and it was to serve as a power tool that these schools were created in the first place. When the Sangh Parivar, without the benefit of foreign funding, opens schools in tribal areas, this is decried as "infiltration", as creating channels of "indoctrination", but such suspicions are at least equally warranted in the case of Christian schools."

"They found that the traditional system of education was more democratic than in European countries, more conducive to generalized literacy, and that the English colonizers had not bettered it: “The proportion of literate children is 1 on 5, against 1 in 17 in France. But this situation was the same before them, the same as in other Oriental countries; they have found it ready-made and have not at all ameliorated it.”"

"Old India had a high rate of literacy, particularly because of its educational system, its Sanskrit and its gurukulams."

"I say without fear of my figures being successfully challenged that India today is more illiterate than it was before a fifty or hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root and left the root like that and the beautiful tree perished."

"As Gandhiji pointed out, in a country where the Ramayana is recited by the low-lowliest, in the remotest corners, the incidence and the quality of its education must be very high indeed."

"The whole tenor of this tendentious scheme for "national integration" becomes fully explicit in the following fiat from the Ministry of Education: “Characterisation of the medieval period as a dark period or as a time of conflict between Hindus and Muslims is forbidden... My heart sinks at the very idea of such a sinister scheme being sponsored by an educational agency set up by the government of a democratic country. It is an insidious attempt at thought-control and brainwashing....The Ministry of Education of the Government of India has directed the education departments in the States to extend this experiment to school-level text-books of history. And this perverse programme of suppressing truth and spreading falsehood is being sponsored by a state which inscribes Satyameva Jayate on its emblem....The rest is recommendations for telling lies to our children, or for not telling to them the truth at all."

"This caravan loaded with synthetic merchandise has, however, continued to move forward. Eight years later (1982), it was reported that “History and Language textbooks for schools all over India will soon be revised radically. In collaboration with various state governments the Ministry of Education has begun a phased programme to weed out undesirable textbooks and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion. ... It was pointed out by the leftist professors that the major cause of “communal trouble” was the “bad habit” of living in the past on the part of “our people”. Most of the politicians knew no history and no religion for that matter. They all agreed with one voice that Indian history, particularly that of the “medieval Muslim period”, should be re-written. That, they pleaded, was the royal road to “national integration”."

"Nehru’s daughter, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, carried her father’s game much farther. In her fight for a monopoly of power, she split the Congress Party, and made a common cause with the Communists. Well-known Communists and fellow-travellers were given positions of power in the ruling Congress Party, in the Government at the Centre as well in the States, and in prestigious institutions all over the country. The Muslim-Marxist combine of “historians” had already captured the Indian History Congress during the days of Pandit Nehru, and many honest historians had been hounded out of it. Now this combine was placed in control of the Indian Council of Historical Research and entrusted with extensive patronage. The combine took over the National Council of Educational Research and Training also, and laid down the guidelines for producing school textbooks on various subjects. The Jawaharlal Nehru University was created and financed on a fabulous scale in order to collect Communist professors from all over the country, and form them into a frontline brigade for launching all sorts of anti-Hindu campaigns."

"Swaminathan Gurumurthy... explains:... I am convinced that the Hindus are politically discriminated against. I can prove this with reference to our Constitution. .... Article 30 says that every minority group has the right to establish and run educational institutions of its choice. (...) Jagmohan... sees a 'need for having a close look at the unhealthy and unwholesome implications of Article 30', at the 'disintegrative impact which Article 30 could have on the Indian state in general and Hindu society in particular'."

"The Hindu nationalists argue that the non-recognition of the glorious Indian past – according to them, one of the most important biases of secular historiography – is in fact a colonial legacy: the British during the colonial period imposed their reading of Indian history, and as part of their strategy of domination, they deprived Indians of the grandeur of their past. According to the Sangh Parivar, the real purpose of the education system established by the British was to devalue Indian culture to keep the colonized people in a subordinate position. Moreover, it did not stop when the British left and this colonial heritage is to be seen even today in the education system. As a consequence Hindu nationalists think that it is their duty now to strive for the ‘decolonisation of the Hindu mind’. According to Elst’s analysis, the Hindu nationalist movement tries to free the Indians from the colonial condition at the mental and cultural level, to complete the process of political and economic decolonization. The need for ‘reviving’ Hinduism springs from the fact that the said hostile ideologies (mostly Islam) have managed to eliminate Hinduism physically in certain geographical parts and social segments of India, and also (mostly the Western ideologies) to neutralize the Hindu spirit among many nominal Hindus."

"Max-Muller, on the strength of official documents and a missionary report concerning education in Bengal prior to the British occupation, asserts that there were then 80.000 native schools in Bengal, or one for every 400 of the population. Ludlow, in his history of British India, says that ' in every Hindoo village which has retained its old form I am assured that the children generally are able to read, write, and cipher, but where we have swept away the village system, as in Bengal, there the village school has also disappeared."

"If the judges decide that knowledge in History is to be frozen and no critical review or rewriting can ever be done, shall we continue to teach impressionable minds about the Aryan Invasion long after archaeology has proved that it never took place? We will be the laughing stock of the international community if we continue with such inanities. More serious inaccuracies relate to the depiction of the Turkish invasions as causing the political unification of India! If this is the tainted History that the Court upholds, we are in danger of becoming a Marxist ideological theocracy....Will the learned judges go over the frozen textbooks themselves, line by line, and assess them on the basis of their own understanding of History? Or will they hear arguments from differing groups of historians and allow them to present their original sources and explain their interpretations in the manner in which lawyers present their briefs? How many original texts would be examined in this manner, and within what time- frame? Which historical sources will be declared acceptable, which unacceptable, and why? [….] The questions arising from this litigation amply demonstrate that the Courtroom is not the proper arena for academic grand-standing. It is sincerely hoped that the learned judges will spare themselves a walk in territory where angels fear to tread."

"The most vitriolic reaction came from the Leftists as they had to hide their own skeletons. They feared their own skewed curriculum would be exposed—their history and social science books which teach how Lenin inspired the Indian freedom struggle and which ignore Rabindranath Tagore, Subhash Chandra Bose or Gandhi’s contributions."

"“History and Language textbooks for schools all over India will soon be revised radically. In collaboration with various state governments the Ministry of Education has begun a phased programme to weed out undesirable textbooks and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion....” Accordingly, “Twenty states and three Union Territories have started the work of evaluation according to guidelines prepared by the NCERT....”"

"The chronicles of the Mahomedan tenure of empire at Delhi are remarkable for little else than cruelty and misrule.. To call historical facts as ‘matter inimical to the religion of Islam’ is an unfair representation… A writer of history is justified by his facts in calling this or that emperor good or bad, just or unjust, whatever his creed may be... [the textbook should be seen as a] “legitimate ‘Hindoo view’ of history, not as ‘an attack on the Mahomedans’."

"Hindu learning in general was suppressed since Hindu and Buddhist schools were attached to temples and monasteries. These were regularly destroyed from the very beginning and with them schools of learning. Qutbuddin Aibak razed the Sanskrit College of Vishaldeva at Ajmer and in its place built a mosque called Arhai din ka Jhonpra. In the east Ikhtiyauddin Bakhtiyar Khalji sacked the Buddhist university centres in Bihar like Odantapuri, Nalanda and Vikramshila between 1197-1202. ... Demolition of schools and temples was continued by most Muslim rulers right up to the time of Aurangzeb, both at the centre and in the provinces. Aurangzeb was one of the enthusiastic sort in this respect, although he was no exception.... I have resided in Delhi, Bhopal and Hyderabad (Deccan) for many years. In all these places I could hardly locate any temples left of the medieval period. Hindu learning was dependent on schools and Brahman teachers, and both were attached to temples mostly in urban areas. And all the three - schools, teachers and temples - were systematically destroyed."

"Guidelines for rewriting history were prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)... The idea was 'to weed out undesirable textbooks (in History and languages) and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion' ....The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education issued a notification dated 28 April 1989 addressed to schools and publishers suggesting some 'corrections' in the teaching and writing of 'Muslim rule in India' - like the real objective of Mahmud Ghaznavi's attack on Somnath, Aurangzeb's policy towards the Hindus, and so on. These guidelines specifically say: 'Muslim rule should not attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim invaders and rulers should not be mentioned.' One instruction in the West Bengal circular is that 'schools and publishers have been asked to ignore and delete mention of forcible conversions to Islam... This experiment with untruth was being attempted since the 30’s-40’s by Muslim and Communist historians. After Independence, they gradually gained strength in university departments. By its policy the Nehruvian state just permitted itself to be hijacked by the so-called progressive, secular and Marxist historians... Armed with money and instructions from the Ministry of Education, the National Council of Educational Research, University Grants Commission, Indian Council of Historical Research, secular and Stalinist historians began to produce manipulated and often manifestly false school and college text-books of history and social studies in the Union Territories and States of India. This has gone on for years. ..."

"On the one hand, the government through the Department of Archaeology preserves monuments the originals of which were destroyed by Islamic vandalism, and on the other, history text-books are directed to say that no shrines were destroyed. Students are taught one thing in the class rooms through their text-books, while they see something else when they go on excursions to historical monuments.... History books are not written only in India; these are written in neighbouring countries also, and what is tried to be concealed here for the sake of national integration, is mentioned with pride in the neighbouring Muslim countries. Scholars in Europe are also working on Indian history and untruths uttered by India’s secular and progressive historians are easily countered... Thousands of pilgrims who visit Mathura or walk past the site of Vishvanath temple and Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi everyday, are reminded of Mughal vandalism and disregard for Hindu sensitivities by Muslim rulers."

"The indigenous education of India was founded on the sanction of the Shastras, which elevated into religious duties and conferred dignity on the commonest transactions of every-day life. The existence of village communities, which left not only their municipal, but also in part their revenue and judicial administrations, in the hands of the people themselves, greatly helped to spread education among all the different members of the community.... If a collegium held, according to Hindu tradition, in the teacher's own house, is not a school; if to read and write Gurmukhi and the naharas is not to know the three or any r's, then, of course, all discussion is at an end... When, however, by school is meant an indigenous school; by a knowledge of reading and writing that of the indigenous characters; by learning or science, oriental learning and science, then indeed was education far extended when we took the Punjab than it is at present..."

"In every Hindu village which has retained anything of its form ... the rudiments of knowledge are sought to be imparted; there is not a child... who is not able to read, to write, to cipher; in the last branch of learning they are confessedly most proficient. ... where the village system has been swept away by us, as in Bengal, there the school system has equally disappeared."

"Nevertheless, it was quite clear, at least to the BJP and its supporters, that India had housed the world’s first civilization. It had not only been responsible for all manner of inventions and advances long before all others but it had civilized the rest of the world. The Chinese may have been startled to learn that they were in fact the descendants of Hindu warriors. Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language, was, it was claimed by the Hindu nationalists, the mother of all other languages. The Vedas, the oldest texts written in Sanskrit, were the foundation of most modern knowledge including all of mathematics. To make sure that Indian students absorbed all this, Joshi introduced new textbooks which stressed such “Indian” subjects as yoga, Sanskrit, astrology, Vedic mathematics, and Vedic culture. He packed schoolboards and research centres with Hindu nationalists whose credentials as historians mattered far less than their adherence to a simplistic view of India’s past and culture. The respected Indian Council of Historical Research in Delhi was told that its historian for early India was to be replaced by an engineer. That appointment at least did not go through because there was a public outcry both about the appointee’s credentials and his attacks on Christians and Muslims. Behind these often laughable attempts to remake Indian education lay a more sinister and political agenda. The BJP and its supporters conceived of India as a Hindu nation and, moreover, one that reflected the values of upper-caste Hindus, including their reverence for cows and their hostility to beef-eating. Their India had little room or tolerance for the large religious minorities of Muslims and Christians, and precious little for lower-caste Hindus."

"But how is this previous process of elevating and Christianizing the men to be effected? We must begin with the schools... In this way we shall best prepare our Indian school-boys for a voluntary acceptance of Christian truth."

"India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education."

"Every young Brahmin... who learns geography in our colleges, learns to smile at the Hindu mythology."

"It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern,—a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect."

"It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes of Bengal thirty years hence."

"Hindu [educational] institutions have no fundamental right to compensation in case of compulsory acquisition of their property by the state... a lasting solution to this problem lies only in amending Article 30 of the Constitution..."

"Dharampal, the noted Gandhian, used British data during the colonial period to show that in the ninetheenth century, the shudras comprised a larger student body than any other community did. ... Besides the large number of schools at that time, there were also approximately a hundred institutions of higher learning in each district of Bengal and Bihar. Unfortunately, these numbers rapidly dwindled all across India during the nineteenth century under British rule. The British also noted that Sanskrit books were being widely used to teach grammar, lexicology, mathematics, medical science, logic, law and philosophy. ....Furthermore, in the early British period in India, British officials noted that education for the masses was more advanced and widespread in India than it was in England. ....According to Dharampal, the British later replaced this Sanskrit-based system with their own English-based one, the goal being to produce low-level clerks for the British administration."

"The report praised the traditional pathashala system for its 'remarkably close contact between the teacher and the pupil' in which there was a transmission from human to human whereas in the modern system it is a mass production method of teaching. In the traditional system, education was personalized and 'there was no rigidity regarding time-table and curriculum'."

"The Lord Cherisher of the Faith learnt that in the provinces of Tatta, Multan, and especially at Benares, the Brahman misbelievers used to teach their false books in their established schools, and that admirers and students both Hindu and Muslim, used to come from great distances to these misguided men in order to acquire this vile learning. His Majesty, eager to establish Islam, issued orders to the governors of all the provinces to demolish the schools and temples of the infidels and with the utmost urgency put down the teaching and the public practice of the religion of these misbelievers.'.."

"Dr. Duff, therefore, conceived the plan of converting the Brahmans by means of English education saturated with Christian teaching and with the help of the English providing them with Government jobs. Dr. Duff’s example was followed by other Missionaries, and high schools and colleges were founded during the next fifty years in all parts of India with lavish aid from Government. The Government despatch of 1854 provided that the education imparted in the Government institutions should be exclusively secular. Canon Mozley, discussing the prospects of Christianity in the fifties of the last century, warmly supported the neutral attitude of the Government and argued that their “so-called Godless education left the Indian mind purged desiring to be filled. Several witnesses before the Parliamentary Committee of 1853 affirmed that Government schools were doing pioneer work for Christianity” (Mayhew: Christianity and Government of India : page 177). The underlying policy of the Educational Despatch was apparently that the Missionary institutions should impart the knowledge of Christian religion directly while the Government institutions were to do the same indirectly. With this object the Mission institutions came to receive grants as much as five times of all private institutions put together and they got control of almost all the secondary schools (ibid page 170). In the shaping of Government policy on education, there was a tendency to identify the interest of Government and Christian Mission…… the Missions definitely included the education of all kinds and grades among their instruments for the evangelisation of India."

"Education in general, and the process of curriculum development in particular, in many … developing countries which not long ago were part of the colonial rule, even now continue to be strongly influenced by the vestiges of the past."

"In the distant past, in India as in many other countries, all recognized branches of learning had had a religious and philosophic bias. Education was not merely a means for earning a living or an instrument for the acquisition of wealth. It was an initiation into the life of spirit, a training of the human soul in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue."

"Universities are the intellectual sanctuaries of the inner life of the nation. They must train intellectual pioneers, seeking guidance from the past but providing dynamics to realise new dreams."

"All religious schools are equal, but some are less equal than others. This paraphrasing of George Orwell’s parodic commandment typifies the thinking of the State when it comes to Hindu-run schools and educational institutions. The Right to Education Act, or the RTE, is the proverbial Moses staff that makes sure this commandment is obeyed."

"To summarise the chain of events, the government applies RTE rules selectively to Hindu-run schools, orders them to maintain a 25 per cent EWS quota, does not provide fee reimbursement on time—so much so that back in 2019, as many as 4,000 schools threatened to go on a strike against the delays in fee reimbursement.” Unconcerned, governments threaten schools and blackmail them with land occupancy provisions just to escape paying the reimbursement. Schools are forced to hike fees for all pupils in order to escape debt and closure; the fee increase forces Hindu parents to shift their children to other schools. More and more Hindu parents take their children away from Hindu schools and these children are then welcomed by schools run by minorities, and by virtue of the religious obligations and directive principles of the Constitution laid down for the believers, where preaching, proselytisation and conversion are religious duties, these children are inevitably, sometimes subtly, sometimes directly, put under pressure to convert. Meanwhile, Hindu schools are forced to close down. A recent report estimates that the RTE is responsible for the closure of more than 10,000 Hindu-run schools."

"If there is only one thing more cruel than not allowing Hindu temples to run their own educational institutions without fear of State intervention and control, it is not allowing Hindus to run their own educational institutions without fear of State intervention and control. And if there is only one thing more cruel than the fact that both these cruelties are being subjected on the Hindus, it is that they are being subjected by the Hindus. Belonging to a Hindu government. In a Hindu Rashtra."

"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.'"

"No reasonable person will deny to the Hindus of former times the praise of very extensive learning. The variety of subjects upon which they wrote [in Sanskrit] prove that almost every science was cultivated among them. The manner also in which they treated these subjects proves that the Hindus learned men yielded the palm of learning to scarcely any other of the ancients. The more their philosophical works and law books are studied, the more will the enquirer be convinced of the depth of wisdom possessed by the authors."

"The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that ‘Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned. (...) With the sway which Marxists have ensured over the education department, each facet at every level will be subjected to the same sort of alterations and substitutions that we have encountered in Bengal – all that is necessary is that the progressives’ government remains in power, and that the rest keep looking the other way. ... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. ... Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of Kafirs [sic] who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, ... Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away. Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, "Communal rewriting of history." ... As we have seen, the explicit part of the circular issued by the West Bengal government in 1989 in effect was that there must be no negative reference to Islamic rule in India. Although these were the very things which contemporary Islamic writers had celebrated, there must be no reference to the destruction of the temples by Muslim rulers, to the forcible conversion of Hindus, to the numerous other disabilities which were placed on the Hindu population. Along with the circular, the passages which had to be removed were listed and substitute passages were specified. The passages which were ordered to be deleted contained, if anything, a gross understatement of the facts. On the other hand, passages which were sought to be inserted contained total falsehoods: that by paying jizyah Hindus could lead ‘normal lives’ under an Islamic ruler like Alauddin Khalji! A closer study of the textbooks which are today being used under the authority of the West Bengal government shows a much more comprehensive, a much deeper design than that of merely erasing the cruelties of Islamic rule. ... *The position of these ‘academics’ in Bengal has, of course, been helped by the fact that the CPI(M) has been in power there for so long. But their sway has not been confined to the teaching and ‘research’ institutions of that state. It is no surprise, therefore, to see the same ‘line’ being poured down the throats of students at the national level. And so strong is the tug of intellectual fashion, so lethal can the controlling mafia be to the career of an academic that often, even though the academic may not quite subscribe to their propositions and ‘theses’, he will end up reciting those propositions. Else his manuscript will not be accepted as a textbook by the NCERT, for instance, it will not be reviewed…."

"The recent five-judge bench Supreme Court judgment in Chebrolu Leela Prasad Rao and Ors v State of AP and Ors, shows us once again how little the 5th Schedule of the Indian constitution which is meant to protect adivasi rights is understood. The reasoning in the judgment – which struck down an Andhra Pradesh government order from 2000 providing 100% reservation for Scheduled Tribe teachers in of the state – moves perilously close to dismantling the entire edifice of the 5th Schedule. If 100% reservation for teaching jobs is not permissible, the next step will be for someone to argue against the ban on alienation of tribal land, or overturn the Samata judgment prohibiting mining leases being given to non-tribals in 5th Schedule Areas in undivided Andhra Pradesh. After all, both these ‘discriminate’ against non-tribals. As non-adivasis from other districts flood scheduled areas leading to clear demographic change, the clamour to do away with the protective provisions of the 5th Schedule is only getting louder."

"The Andhra Pradesh G.O. of 2000 was aimed at promoting education in tribal areas and addressing the problem of rampant teacher . As anyone even slightly acquainted with the problems of tribal areas knows, non-tribal teachers are often reluctant to travel to or live in remote adivasi hamlets. Another big problem is language. Many non-tribals, including lower government officials, have lived for years in tribal areas without feeling the need to learn tribal languages. At the primary level, mutual incomprehension between non-tribal teachers and tribal students hampers the basic education of children. The judges tell us that “It is an obnoxious idea that tribals only should teach the tribals” (para 133), but for far too long, the really obnoxious idea that has pervaded the educational system and is reflected in judgments like this one is that only non-tribals should teach tribals, to “uplift and mainstream” them because “their language and their primitive way of life makes them unfit to put up with the mainstream and to be governed by the s” (para 107)."

"A standard view is that expressed by Justice S.B. Sinha in his (minority) judgment of the Andhra high court on the same issue in 2001, where non-tribal teachers are axiomatically assumed to be more efficient and meritorious (para 86); and “(f)or upliftment of the educationally backward people, it is necessary to impart education through teachers who are more informed and more meritorious regardless of their caste”(para 126). For the Supreme Court to say, “They are not supposed to be seen as a human zoo and source of enjoyment of primitive culture and for dance performances” (para 107 of Chebrolu) betrays a mentality that thinks of Scheduled Tribes precisely in those terms rather than as people with the right to define their own educational future. For far too long, education in India has been seen by the establishment as a ‘civilising’ mission designed to make adivasis and dalits into mental clones of the upper castes, even if they continue in their subordinate jobs. Merit is defined merely as efficiency in achieving this goal, rather than in terms of success in tapping indigenous ecological knowledge, preserving adivasi languages and culture and giving confidence to adivasi students by acting as s. Even though many adivasi teachers have also internalised this idea of non-tribal superiority, having hundred per cent adivasi teachers in Scheduled areas is a small step towards reversing this condescension."

"India's education had two aims, both organically linked. One was to strengthen our body and mind, our nerves and vitality.... There was yet another aim of Hindu learning to which we would make a barest reference here. The ancient seers would like to go to the principles of a thing, its source and foundation. They would not be satisfied with half-way houses. For example, in their system of education, their aim was not to seek or provide bits of information on random subjects, but to form and mould the mind itself which receives, processes and analyses all information. Similarly, in their search for knowledge, their aim was not just external half-knowledge about a stray subject. On the other hand, they sought knowledge of a deeper kind, and they sought that source-knowledge which is the fountain-head of all knowledge and all sciences. They thought and meditated and found that "mind is the uniting-point of all intentions"; and similarly, they found that the "heart is the uniting-point of all sciences and knowledge". So if mind is the source of all intentions and resolutions, then we could conquer the latter by conquering the former. Similarly, if heart is the source of all sciences and knowledge, we could master all sciences by entering into the heart. Many of the sciences came to India through this process, through this churning of the heart-ocean."

"It is true that in the decades in which India was ruled imperiously by the Congress, the task of writing history textbooks was allotted to Leftist historians who chose to view India’s past through a distorted lens. The most celebrated of these historians, Romila Thapar, has gone so far as to deny that Muslim invaders destroyed the temples of us idolatrous infidels. Undoubtedly, if she were writing about more recent history, she would deny that the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan — and would say that they fell to pieces of their own accord."

"[The British system of education led to...] “The rise of a class of young prigs for whom it became the done thing to denigrate everything Indian in an attempt at blind imitation of the customs and attitudes of western people”."

"It bothers me that I went to school and college in this country without any idea of the enormous contribution of Hindu civilisation to the history of the world. It bothers me that even today our children, whether they go to state schools or expensive private ones, come out without any knowledge of their own culture or civilisation […] You cannot be proud of a heritage you know nothing about, and in the name of secularism, we have spent 50 years in total denial of the Hindu roots of this civilisation. We have done nothing to change a colonial system of mass education founded on the principle that Indian civilisation had nothing to offer […] our contempt for our culture and civilisation […] evidence of a country that continues to be colonised to the core? Our contempt for who we are gets picked up these days by the Western press […]"

"The Indian State instead of the encouraging objective rendering of the history have encouraged few vested interests to hijack the historical narrative. This has resulted in present situation where the history, which is taught in our schools and colleges, is the British imperialist-sponsored one, with the intent to destroy our history... An accurate history should not only record the periods of glory but the moments of degeneration, of the missed opportunities, and of the failure to forge national unity at crucial junctures in time. It should draw lessons for the future generations from costly errors in the past... It is disturbing to read the amount of intellectual investment that has been made by the forces that are inimical to our country. These forces have penetrated into our democratic institutions to hollow them from inside... The present work brings to fore the impunity with which NCERT was compromised during UPA regime. During both the terms of the ousted alliance, history has been totally rewritten to serve the purpose of divisive forces, which are trying to uproot Hindu ethos of the country. Young and impressionable minds of the children are being hijacked to be more prone to accept the narrative of breaking India forces. It is high time the history text books are rewritten with clear directions to the historians that the narrative of our country should be depicted with honesty. Our nation’s past is full of cultural, social, economic and scientific achievements. The current history text books not only undermine the achievements but instead burden the country’s children with inferiority complex and hatred for each other. The social dissonance that these books create should be rectified."

"In 1970 Dr. Torcato published his book, Education: Its History and Philosophy, which caused an uproar in official Catholic circles and was immediately banned in Catholic colleges. In it he writes, "The religious organisations which control education in India openly discuss the motives and ideals of their religion-controlled educational institutions.... 76 The Catholic leaders do not hesitate to say publicly the reasons which motivated the opening of their educational establishments. The reasons are based on their dogmatic religious beliefs which they openly teach in all their educational establishments, howsoever crude their religious instruction may be. Besides, the religion-based educational organisations are meant also to be the chief means of most important contact with the finest elements of Hindu society and other societies as well. The Catholic leaders maintain that the main object of their schools, colleges and other educational institutions is the education of Catholic youth, and for this purpose they try to bestow greater care on the spiritual training based on dogmatic teaching of Roman Catholicism. "By means of Solidalities, Newman Clubs, Catholic University Students' Federation and Training Camps and such other extracurricular activities, the heads of these institutions make every effort to strengthen their religious beliefs and to deepen their spiritual life. This means in other words, the salvation of their own souls and indirectly the conversion of non-Catholic souls, for they are excluded from Heaven. Every effort possible should be made not ex officio but when the opportunity arises to show to fellow students the great sacramental efficacy of the door to salvation which in the theological language is called the sacrament of Baptism.... "This what is said about the educational establishments administered by Roman Catholics holds good mutatis mutandis of all other Christian sects and also of Muslims and other proselytizing religious organisations. They believe that they are commanded by their prophets and by the voice from above to save the souls of others whom they call infidels. This being the case, our main concern is to find out whether the right to impart education to Indians should be vested in the National Ministry of Education or in the religious and communal organisations. We know that they are bold to spread the errors and superstitions taking full advantage of the articles of the Constitution which empowers them to establish educational institutions and thus go ahead with their religious fairy tales and communal viruses to the great detriment of the most vital interests of the Indian Nation as a whole.""

"In these modern days there is a greater impetus towards higher education on the European lines, and the trend of opinion is strong towards women getting this higher education. Of course, there are some people in India who do not want it, but those who do want it carried the day. It is a strange fact that Oxford and Cambridge are closed to women today, so are Harvard and Yale; but Calcutta University opened its doors to women more than twenty years ago."

"No people probably appreciate more justly the importance of instruction than the Hindus... They sacrifice all the feelings of wealth, family pride and caste that their children may have the advantage of good education.... This desire is strongly impressed on the minds of all the Hindus. It is inculcated by their own system, which provided schools in every village.... [the] spirit of enquiry and of liberty has most probably been effected by the soodors [Shudras] who compose the great body of population, and who were in possession of the principal authority and property of the country."

"The Indian system of education was so economical, so effective that some of its features were exported to England and Europe. The "monitor", the "slate", the "group-study" were directly borrowed from the old Indian practice.... In this connection we have the testimony of Brigadier-General Alexander Walker, ... he says that the new British "system was borrowed from the Brahmans and brought from India to Europe. It has been made the foundation of the National Schools in every enlightened country. Some gratitude is due to a people from who we have learnt to diffuse among the lower ranks of society instructions by one of the most unerring and economical methods which has ever been invented". According to him, by this method, "the children are instructed without violence, and by a process peculiarly simple"."

"Muslim rule should never atttact any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."

"By annihilating native literature, by sweeping away from all sources of pride and pleasure in their own mental efforts, by rendering a whole people dependent upon a remote and unknown country for all their ideas and the words in which to clothe them, we should degrade their character, depress their energies and render them incapable of aspiring to any intellectual distinction."

"I have no doubt that many of you here are fathers and mothers, and have boys and girls in Missionary schools even now. Frankly, do you not think that it is your duty to have them educated as Hindus? For the sake of Government jobs. Are you prepared to sacrifice the interest of your own blood, your own ancestral cultural inheritance, and your own religion? If your boys become doctors, or lawyers and cease to be Hindus, what is the benefit? Is that the ideal transmitted to you by the great Rishis?"

"The enrolment of Muslim children at the primary school level in the relevant period was 12.39 per cent as agai­nst the child population of 16.81 per cent."

"Indian Art demands of the artist the power of communion with the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking precedence of the sense of material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper vision within..."

"I have, however, mentioned [in The Foundations of Indian Culture] that Islamic culture contributed the Indo-Saracenic architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were always semi-barbaric."

"We shall never be able to do justice to Indian art, for ignorance and fanaticism have destroyed its greatest achievements, and have half ruined the rest. At Elephanta the Portuguese certified their piety by smashing statuary and bas-reliefs in unrestrained barbarity; and almost everywhere in the north the Moslems brought to the ground those triumphs of Indian architecture, of the fifth and sixth centuries, which tradition ranks as far superior to the later works that arouse our wonder and admiration today. The Moslems decapitated statues, and tore them limb from limb; they appropriated for their mosques, and in great measure imitated, the graceful pillars of the Jain temples. Time and fanaticism joined in the destruction, for the orthodox Hindus abandoned and neglected temples that had been profaned by the touch of alien hands."

"We may guess at the lost grandeur of north Indian architecture by the powerful edifices that still survive in the south, where Moslem rule entered only in minor degree, and after some habituation to India had softened Mohammedan hatred of Hindu ways. Further, the great age of temple architecture in the south came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after Akbar had tamed the Moslems and taught them some appreciation of Indian art. Consequently the south is rich in temples, usually superior to those that remain standing in the north, and more massive and impressive; Fergusson counted some thirty "Dravidian" or southern temples any one of which, in his estimate, must have cost as much as an English cathedral."

"Before Indian art, as before every phase of Indian civilization, we stand in humble wonder at its age and its continuity."

"From that time to this, through the vicissitudes of five thousand years, India has been creating its peculiar type of beauty in a hundred arts. The record is broken and incomplete, not because India ever rested, but because war and the idol-smashing ecstasies of Moslems destroyed uncounted masterpieces of building and statuary, and poverty neglected the preservation of others. We shall find it difficult to enjoy this art at first sight; its music will seem weird, its painting obscure, its architecture confused, its sculpture grotesque. We shall have to remind ourselves at every step that our tastes are the fallible product of our local and limited traditions and environments; and that we do ourselves and foreign nations injustice when we judge them, or their arts, by standards and purposes natural to our life and alien to their own."

"In India the artist had not yet been separated from the artisan, making art artificial and work a drudgery; as in our Middle Ages, so, in the India that died at Plassey, every mature workman was a craftsman, giving form and personality to the product of his skill and taste. Even today, when factories replace handicrafts, and craftsmen degenerate into “hands,” the stalls and shops of every Hindu town show squatting artisans beating metal, moulding jewelry, drawing designs, weaving delicate shawls and embroideries, or carving ivory and wood. Probably no other nation known to us has ever had so exuberant a variety of arts."

"It is clear, from the drawings, in red pigment, of animals and a rhinoceros hunt in the prehistoric caves of Singanpur and Mirzapur, that Indian painting has had a history of many thousands of years. Palettes with ground colors ready for use abound among the remains of neolithic India. Great gaps occur in the history of the art, because most of the early work was ruined by the climate, and much of the remainder was destroyed by Moslem “idol-breakers” from Mahmud to Aurangzeb. The Vinaya Pitaka (ca. 300 B.C.) refers to King Pasenada’s palace as containing picture galleries, and Fa-Hien and Yuan Chwang describe many buildings as famous for the excellence of their murals; but no trace of these structures remains. One of the oldest frescoes in Tibet shows an artist painting a portrait of Buddha; the later artist took it for granted that painting was an established art in Buddha’s days."

"Everywhere in India, in the millennium before the coming of the Moslems, the art of the sculptor, though limited as well as inspired by its subservience to architecture and religion, produced masterpieces. The pretty statue of Vishnu from Sultanpur,47 the finely chiseled statue of Padmapani, the gigantic three-faced Shiva (commonly called “Trimurti”) carved in deep relief in the caves at Elephanta, the almost Praxitelean stone statue worshiped at Nokkas as the goddess Rukmini, the graceful dancing Shiva, or Nataraja, cast in bronze by the Chola artist-artisans of Tanjore, the lovely stone deer of Mamallapuram, and the handsome Shiva of Perur—these are evidences of the spread of the carver’s art into every province of India."

"The same motives and methods crossed the frontiers of India proper, and produced masterpieces from Turkestan and Cambodia to Java and Ceylon. The student will find examples in the stone head, apparently of a boy, dug up from the sands of Khotan by Sir Aurel Stein’s expedition; the head of Buddha from Siam; the Egyptianly fine “Harihara” of Cambodia; the magnificent bronzes of Java; the Gandhara-like head of Shiva from Prambanam; the supremely beautiful female figure (“Prajnaparamita”) now in the Leyden Museum; the perfect Bodhisattwa in the Glyptothek at Copenhagen; the calm and powerful Buddha, and the finely chiseled Avalokiteshvara (“The Lord who looks down with pity upon all men”), both from the great Javanese temple of Borobudur; or the massive primitive Buddha, and the lovely “moonstone” doorstep, of Anuradhapura in Ceylon. This dull list of works that must have cost the blood of many men in many centuries will suggest the influence of Hindu genius on the cultural colonies of India."

"Aurangzeb was a misfortune for Mogul and Indian art. Dedicated fanatically to an exclusive religion, he saw in art nothing but idolatry and vanity. Already Shah Jehan had prohibited the erection of Hindu temples;127 Aurangzeb not only continued the ban, but gave so economical a support to Moslem building that it, too, languished under his reign. Indian art followed him to the grave."

"But we cannot judge these works in their original form from what survives of them today; and doubtless there are clues to their appreciation that are not revealed to alien souls. Even the Occidental, however, can admire the nobility of the subject, the majestic scope of the plan, the unity of the composition, the clearness, simplicity and decisiveness of the line, and among many details the astonishing perfection of that bane of all artists, the hands. Imagination can picture the artist-priest who prayed in these cells and perhaps painted these walls and ceilings with fond and pious art while Europe lay buried in her early-medieval darkness. Here at Ajanta religious devotion fused architecture, sculpture and painting into a happy unity, and produced one of the sovereign monuments of Hindu art."

"Sages such as Sri Aurobindo who have meditated on Hindu iconography, and savants such as Ananda Coomara-swamy, Stella Kramrisch, and Alice Boner who have studied the subject, assure us that the forms and features of Hindu icons have a source higher than the normal reaches of the human mind. The icons are no photocopies of any human or animal forms as we find them in their physical frames. They are in fact crystallizations of the abstract into the concrete, of the infinite into the finite. They always point beyond themselves, and a contemplation of them always draws us from the outer to the inner.Hindu Šilpašãstras lay down not only technical formulas for carving holy icons in stone, and metal, and other materials. They also lay down elaborate rules about how the artist is to fast, and pray, and otherwise purify himself for long periods before he is permitted, if at all, to have a psychic image of the God or Goddess whom he wants to incarnate in a physical form. It is this sublime source of the Šilpašãstras which alone can explain a Sarnath Buddha, or a Chidambram NaTarãja, or a Vidisha Varãha, to name only a few of the large assembly of divine images inhabiting the earth. It is because this sublime source is not accessible to modern sculptors that we have to be content with poor copies which look like parodies of the original marvels."

"There are many Hindus who are legitimately proud of Hindu art, architecture, sculpture, music, painting, dance, drama, literature, linguistics, lexicography and so on. But they seldom take into account the fact that this great wealth of artistic, literary and scientific heritage will die if Hindu society which created it is no more there to preserve, protect and perpetuate it."

"India has always been an object ofyeaming, a realm of wonder, a world of magic."... "India is the land of dreams. India had always dreamt - more of the Bliss that is man's final goal. And this has helped India to be more creative in history than any other nation. Hence the effervescence of myths and legends, religious and philosophies, music, and dances and the different styles of architecture." ... "India has created a special momentum in world history as a country to be searched for."

"The Hindu architects produced buildings incomparably more rich and interesting as works of art. I have not visited Southern India, where, it is said, the finest specimen of Hindu architecture are to be found. But I have seen enough of the art in Rajputana to convince me of its enormous superiority to any work of the Mohammedans. The temples at Chitor, for example, are specimens of true classicism."

"Gold and silver bangles, ear-ornaments, necklaces, and other jewelry “so well finished and so highly polished,” says Marshall, “that they might have come out of a Bond Street jeweler’s of today rather than from a prehistoric house of 5,000 years ago.”"

""It will be seen that stage practice in Asia owes a great deal to India as an ancestral source. Indian influence on dance and theatre which are one and the same thing in Asia was like some great subterranean river following a spreading course and forming new streams on the way"."

""China also passed on to Japan the ceremonial dances of India with their music, which were Japanized as the solemn and colorful Bugaku"."

"[And here is what Sachs has to say about Bharata's ancient text the Natya-Shastra, which he agrees could be as early as the 4th century BCE and about which he tells us that it] "testifies to a well-established system of music in ancient India, with an elaborate theory of intervals, consonances, modes, melodic and rhythmic patterns". ... "Bharata's text was probably rehandled as early as antiquity, and it may confirm the idea that Bharata himself wrote his treatise much earlier" ... [He also tells us that this text establishes that it represents a stage where the] "slow transition from folk-song to art-song, from hundreds of tribal styles to one all-embracing music of India […] had long ago come to an end"."

"“I am sad to note that Indians know very little about their folk arts or the artistes…using this medium (TV) to destroy one’s own originality and to spread foreign culture is dangerous…the intellectuals…should recognise the fact that their own culture is dissolving like delta in the sea”. .... [When he had visited Gujarat some years earlier, he had met a Bhavai folk drama artiste who knew 200 plays. But, this time, the oldest Bhavai artiste knew only 65 plays:] “Between two generations, 135 Bhavais were lost! Nobody bothered to record them. They were lost forever”."

"So deep has the Mohammadan influence (on art) sunk that even in Ayodhya, the birthplace of Rama, the craft of wood work presents no image of the ever popular hero with the bow."

"It may also be noted in this connection that Hindu art practically went out of existence in Muslim States, though in a few places like Gujarat, its influence may be traced in Muslim architecture. After the thirteenth century, notable specimens of Hindu art are to be found only in the Hindu States of Vijayanagara and Mewar. Hindu culture did not flourish under Islam, and the few facts brought forward to prove the contrary may at best be likened to a few tiny oases which merely serve to bring into greater relief the barren desolation of the long stretch of arid desert. (Preface)"

"To judge of the past from the present, let us take the English nation in India. It has held India for a longer period than the Greeks did Bactria from the time of Alexander to that of As'oka, but yet it has produced no appreciable effect on the architecture of its neighbours. The Bhutanese and the Sikimites have not yet borrowed a single English moulding. The Nepalese, under the administration of Sir Jung Bahadur, are not a whit behind-hand of As ́oka and his people; Sir Jung went to Europe, which As'oka never did; still there is no change perceptible in Nepalese architecture indicative of a European amalgamation. The Kashmiris and the Afghans have proved equally conservative, and so have the Burmese. But to turn from their neighbours to the people of Hindustan : these have had intimate intercourse with Europeans now for over three hundred years, and enjoyed the blessings of English rule for over a century, and yet they have not produced a single temple built in the Saxon, or any other European style. Thus the conclusion we are called upon to accept is that what has not been accomplished by the intimate intercourse of three centuries, and the absolute sovereignty of a century, in these days of railways, and electric telegraphs, and mass education, was effected by the Greeks two thousand years ago simply by living as distant neighbours for eighty years or so."

"And it is precisely the totality of these devices of Harappan art that gives it an intangible yet unmistakable air of ‘Indianness’: thus Stella Kramrish, one of the most distinguished experts on Indian art, felt that ‘in certain respects some of the Mohenjo-daro figurines can be compared with the work by village potters and women made to this day in Bengal’."

"At a more formal level, she was convinced that ‘the beautiful Maurya sculpture presupposes continuity in the artistic traditions since the Harappa period’."

"The French Vedic scholar Jean Varenne also noted how ‘several of these [Harappan] themes (figures seated in the “lotus posture”, mythical animals, celebration of dance) appear as constants in Indian art’."

"In the same manner, if on finding mention of the word Yavanikâ (curtain) in the dramas of Kâlidâsa and other Indian poets, the Yâvanika (Ionian or Greek) influence on the whole of the dramatic literature of the time is ascertained, then one should first stop to compare whether the Aryan dramas are at all like the Greek. Those who have studied the mode of action and style of the dramas of both the languages must have to admit that any such likeness, if found, is only a fancy of the obstinate dreamer, and has never any real existence as a matter of fact. Where is that Greek chorus? The Greek Yavanika is on one side of the stage, the Aryan diametrically on the other. The characteristic manner of expression of the Greek drama is one thing, that of the Aryan quite another. There is not the least likeness between the Aryan and the Greek dramas: rather the dramas of Shakespeare resemble to a great extent the dramas of India. So the conclusion may also be drawn that Shakespeare is indebted to Kalidasa and other ancient Indian dramatists for all his writings, and that the whole Western literature is only an imitation of the Indian. Lastly, turning Professor Max Müller's own premisses against him, it may be said as well that until it is demonstrated that some one Hindu knew Greek some time one ought not to talk even of Greek influence."

"The Mussalman invaders sacked the Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramshila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri to name only a few. They razed to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded. The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and other places outside India. A very large number were killed outright by the Muslim commanders. How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves. Summarizing the evidence relating to the slaughter of the Buddhist Monks perpetrated by the Musalman General in the course of his invasion of Bihar in 1197 AD, Mr. Vincent Smith says, "The Musalman General, who had already made his name a terror by repeated plundering expeditions in Bihar, seized the capital by a daring stroke... Great quantities of plunder were obtained, and the slaughter of the 'shaven headed Brahmans', that is to say the Buddhist monks, was so thoroughly completed, that when the victor sought for someone capable of explaining the contents of the books in the libraries of the monasteries, not a living man could be found who was able to read them. 'It was discovered,' we are told, 'that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar.'"

"The Ancient and classical creations of the Sanskrit tongue both in quality and in body and abundance of excellence, in their potent originality and force and beauty, in their substance the height and width of the reach of their spirit stand very evidently in the front rank among the world's great literatures."

"The literature of India makes us acquainted with a great nation of past ages, which grasped every branch of knowledge, and which will always occupy a distinguished place in the history of the civilization of mankind."

"As the Mahabharata resembles the Iliad in being the story of a great war fought by gods and men, and partly occasioned by the loss of a beautiful woman from one nation to another, so the Ramayana resembles the Odyssey, and tells of a hero's hardships and wanderings, and of his wife's patient waiting for reunion with him."

"In one sense drama in India is as old as the Vedas, for at least the germ of drama lies in the Upanishads."

"Ever since Sir William Jones translated it and Goethe praised it, the most famous of Hindu dramas has been the Sbakuntala of Kalidasa."

"Perhaps the final stimulus to drama came from the intercourse, established by Alexander's invasion, between India and Greece."

"Hindu literature is especially rich in fables; indeed, India is probably responsible for most of the fables that have passed like an international currency across the frontiers of the world."

"It strikes everyone in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature, that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought...""

"I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education. [...] It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England."

"Human life would not be sufficient to make oneself acquainted with any considerable part of Hindu literature."

"Since the Renaissance there has been no event of such world-wide significance in the history of culture as the discovery of Sanskrit literature in the latter part of the eighteenth century."

"Sikander burnt all books the same wise as fire burns hay. All the scintillating works faced destruction in the same manner that lotus flowers face with the onset of frosty winter."

"We cannot explain the development of the whole of this great literature if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting-point."

"'Those who expect', writes he, 'from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome commit the very gregarious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover,' that the chronicles of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren, as those of the early Rajputs.' He adds, 'My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwarra have more than once been checked by a very just remark: 'When our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?' 'If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmood's invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the character of their princes and the acts of their reigns?' The fact appears to be that 'After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other interests, irretrievable losses.'"

"Of the Vedic poetic art Watkins writes: “The language of India from its earliest documentation in the Rigveda has raised the art of the phonetic figure to what many would consider its highest form”."

"Tibet preserved as best as it could, what India was no longer in a position to do. For example, 4000 books belonging to the Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit literature were translated into Tibetan language. Today, about 3800 of them are no longer even known in India. They were so completely destroyed. The work of destruction was so complete. Today much of old India is found in neighbouring countries like Tibet and Siam and Cambodia; and India's old past history cannot be reconstructed except with their aid."

"[...] India has as rich a culture, as creative an imagination and wit and humor as any China has to offer, and that India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop."

"In the ancient Indian scriptures, the idea of man is quite illimitable and sublime … He is at length lost in the Supreme Entity himself."

"“By annihilating native literature, by sweeping away from all sources of pride and pleasure in their own mental efforts, by rendering a whole people dependent upon a remote and unknown country for all their ideas and the words in which to clothe them, we should degrade their character, depress their energies and render them incapable of aspiring to any intellectual distinction.”"

"India was China’s teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world’s teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop."

"“Scarcely a subject can be named, with the single exception of historiography, not furnishing a greater number of texts, and commentaries or commentaries on commentaries, than any other language of the ancient world”."

"It is the duty of Indian writers to give expression to the changes taking place in Indian life and to assist the spirit of progress in the country by introducing scientific rationalism in literature. They should undertake to develop an attitude of literary criticism which will discourage the general reactionary and revivalist tendencies on questions like family, religion, sex, war and society and to combat literary trends reflecting communalism, racial antagonism, sexual libertinism…"

"It is the object of our Association [IPWA] to rescue literature from the conservative classes... to bring the arts into the closest touch with the people… as well as lead us to the future we envisage."

"My idea is first of all to bring out the gems of spirituality that are stored up in our books and in the possession of a few only, hidden, as it were, in monasteries and in forests - to bring them out; to bring the knowledge out of them, not only from the hands where it is hidden, but from the still more inaccessible chest, the language in which it is preserved, the incrustation of centuries of Sanskrit words. In one word, I want to make them popular. I want to bring out these ideas and let them be the common property of all, of every man in India, whether he knows the Sanskrit language or not. The great difficulty in the way is the Sanskrit language - the glorious language of ours; and this difficulty cannot be removed until - if it is possible - the whole of our nation are good Sanskrit scholars. You will understand the difficulty when I tell you that I have been studying this language all my life, and yet every new book is new to me. How much more difficult would it then be for people who never had time to study the language thoroughly! Therefore the ideas must be taught in the language of the people; at the same time, Sanskrit education must go on along with it, because the very sound of Sanskrit words gives a prestige and a power and a strength to the race. The attempts of the great Ramanuja and of Chaitanya and of Kabir to raise the lower classes of India show that marvellous results were attained during the lifetime of those great prophets; yet the later failures have to be explained, and cause shown why the effect of their teachings stopped almost within a century of the passing away of these great Masters. The secret is here. They raised the lower classes; they had all the wish that these should come up, but they did not apply their energies to the spreading of the Sanskrit language among the masses. Even the great Buddha made one false step when he stopped the Sanskrit language from being studied by the masses. He wanted rapid and immediate results, and translated and preached in the language of the day, Pâli. That was grand; he spoke in the language of the people, and the people understood him. That was great; it spread the ideas quickly and made them reach far and wide. But along with that, Sanskrit ought to have spread."

"In literature, our epics and poems and dramas rank as high as those of any language; our 'Shaguntala' [Shakuntala] was summarized by Germany's greatest poet, as 'heaven and earth united'. India has given to the world the fables of Aesop, which were copied by Aesop from an old Sanskrit book; it has given the Arabian Nights, yes, even the story of Cinderella and the Bean Stalks."

"Mill’s contempt for ancient India extends to the other Asian civilizations as well and . . . much of Mill’s framework has survived in the colonial and post-colonial Indology. For instance, his idea that the history of ancient India, like the history of other barbarous nations, has been the history of mutually warring small states, only occasionally relieved by some larger political entities established by the will of some particularly ambitious and competent individuals has remained with us in various forms till today."

"In 1825, the Frenchman, Joseph Guigniaut stated that he depended more on German than English works for information on Hindu religion. “These latter are very important,” he said, “despite being written, for the most part, from a narrow point of view and a rather unphilosophical spirit. The route mapped by Jones, Robertson, and the learned Thomas Maurice was soon abandoned in England, and the Christian missionaries contributed, through their often tainted picture of the moral and religious state of these people, a great deal to the diffusion of a host of false ideas about the ancient religion of the Hindus.”"

"The same thing is true of the Western Indology departments, where many professors share the positions of anti-Brahminism to a greater or lesser extent. In my student days in Leuven University’s Asian Studies department, I saw students of Chinese develop into zealous defenders of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and students of Islam become apologists of Islam. The Indology students, by contrast, never developed such feelings for Hinduism, and this was in large measure due to the negative light cast on Hinduism by its original sin of the Aryan invasion and the “racist imposition of caste”. Of course it is legitimate to criticize caste; but it is perverse to do so on the basis of false history. ... When it comes to controversial issues, most Western India-watchers are incredibly gullible parrots of whatever their privileged Indian contacts tell them"

"The second problem is that many India-watchers who have ordinary notions of objectivity (...) have none the less published books and papers on the present topic which suffer serious lapses from the normal scholarly standards. The exacting standards of objectivity are obviously a permanent challenge to scholars in any field, but this field, or at least its present-day state of the art, presents some peculiar problems. In some cases, the bias may be in the mind of the India-watcher, but the overriding problem is that even scholars and journalist who do try to be objective are handicapped in this endeavour by their reliance on Indian sources which have considerable standing but are none the less far from objective."

"Ronald Inden notes that such scholars have turned themselves into neocolonialists by their subconscious use of colonial assumptions in conceiving of the dharma traditions. He claims that such Indian intellectuals have a tendency to recuperate the older colonialist imaginings of India. Representations of the systematic mistreatment of women (patriarchy), the exploitation of the young (child labor), domination by a parasitic Brahman caste of Aryan descent, discrimination by castes (untouchability), and the triumphalism of an atavistic Hinduism reiterate the earlier images of India as an inherently and uniquely divided and oppressive place."

"Since the Renaissance there has been no event of such world-wide significance in the history of culture as the discovery of Sanskrit literature in the latter part of the 18th century."

"One might think this position (that the English colonialist should convert their Indian "brethren" to the Gospel) would have endeared Max Muller to missionaries, but in fact it did not. Rather, they found him entirely too sympathetic to the "heathen" and suspected him of being insufficiently committed to the faith. Accordingly, in 1860 he was passed over for Oxford's Boden chair in Sanskrit, which carried responsibility for preparing the Sanskrit-English dictionary, both of which were intended, under the terms of Lt-Col Boden's will, to advance the conversion of Indians to Christianity, not to foster English understanding or respect for India."

"If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India."

"[High-profile India-watching academics] “need to indulge America’s saviour complex if they need a share of the shrinking funding. The objective of the research needs to alleviate the misery of some victim and challenge a villain. And so, Doniger will provide evidence of how Puranic tales reinforce Brahmin hegemony, while Pollock will begin his essays on Ramayana with reference to Babri Masjid demolition, reminding readers that his paper has a political, not merely a theoretical, purpose. .. European and American academicians have been on the defensive to ensure they do not ‘other’ the East. So now, there is a need to universalise the ‘othering’ process – and show that it happens even in the East, and is not just a Western disease. And so their writings are at pains to constantly point how privileged Hindus have been ‘othering’ the Dalits, Muslims and women, using Sanskrit, Ramayana, Mimamsa, Dharmashastras, and Manusmriti... After having been at the receiving end of Orientalist and Marxist criticism since the 19th century, privileged Hindus have not developed requisite skills in the field of humanities to launch a worthwhile defence.... Being placed on a high pedestal is central to both strategies. Criticism also evokes a similar reaction in both sides – they quickly declare themselves as misunderstood heroes and martyrs, and stir up their legion of followers. Doniger and Pollock have inspired an army of activist-academicians who sign petitions to keep ‘dangerous’ Indian leaders and intellectuals out of American universities and even American soil... No dissent is tolerated. If you agree with either side, you become rational scientists for them. If you disagree with them, you become fascists – or racists."

"Old Testament criticism was never bound by the same rules and prejudices as the study of China or of India, and vice versa."

"Music indeed changes and evolves with time, as does the preferences of the audience, I believe it is a good idea to listen to and appreciate all kinds of music. That is how we learn to differentiate and educate ourselves. However, it is important to never forget our roots, without roots nothing grows!"

"I would like to inspire the younger generation to go back to the roots we belong to. I feel that the songs will bring back those memories."

"My mother was a popular folk singer. I grew up listening to her songs and know the lyrics and tunes by heart. Although she wanted me to become a singer, I chose a career in the aviation industry. I have come back after more than 10 years to fulfil her dream."

"The state shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India."

"One wonders how long it will take for the Government of the day to implement the mandate of the framers of the Constitution under Article 44. ... There is no justification in delaying indefinitely the introduction of a uniform personal law."

"There is nothing non-secular or sectarian in demanding that the provisions of Indian civil laws should apply evenhandedly to all."

"The failure to adopt a Uniform civil code [has the effect that] Muslim women suffer because they do not have an equal right of inheritance, because they cannot easily obtain a divorce, because they can be divorced by their husband at their whim or caprice."

"We have to insist on a common personal law for all citizens of India."

"A Common Civil Code has been a long-standing demand of the Jana Sangh-BJP, and therefore it is deemed a “communal” demand. However, anyone outside the ambit of Indian secularism, anyone who can see through its veil of fallacies, would call this a secular demand. Indeed, it is enjoined in the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution. To be more precise, the Nehruvians sidelined this demand by only giving it a place among the non-enforceable Directive Principles, but at least it forms part of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has asked the Government to report on its steps towards a Common Civil Code, a request gone unanswered by the past two Congress Governments. Equality of all citizens before the law regardless of religion, hence a Common Civil Code, is a defining trait of all secular states."

"The classic example given is the Shah Bano case of 1985: repudiated by her husband, the Muslim woman Shah Bano went to court to force him to pay alimony, which Islamic law forbids; the Supreme Court upheld her claim on the basis of equality before the law (Hindu women would have the right to alimony in her case), but under Muslim pressure, Rajiv Gandhi's Congress Government voted a law overruling the verdict and reaffirming the Islamic rules on divorce, at least for Muslims."

"This totally non-secular arrangement was meant to be only temporary, for the Constitution stipulates in its directive principles (Art. 44) that the State shall endeavour to enact a Common Civil Code. In 1995, the Supreme Court reminded the Government of this directive principle, and directed it to report on the progress made in the matter... The BJS-BJP has always demanded the implementation of Art.44, but the majority has blocked this secular policy time and again...The Common Civil Code is not a demand of Hindu society (certainly not a priority), but is intrinsically a demand of secularism... The trouble of raising this impec­cably secular and explicitly constitutio­nal demand should be left to the secularists; as long as they don't put it on the agenda, the present religion-based personal law systems are a standing testimony to the hypocrisy of the secularist establishment. Equality before the law regardless of religion is an essential requirement of a secular state, and it is a measure of the perversion of India's political parlance that BJP opponents actually defend the separate religion-based civil codes in the name of secularism."

"An Anti-Common Civil Code Convention was held by Muslims at the Talkatora Indoor Stadium in New Delhi on July 4, 1995. The Convention demanded that the Muslims should be exempted from the purview of Article 44 of the Constitution which envisages such a code. Asad Madani, the chief of the Jamiat, called the demand for a common civil code a conspiracy to finish off the Muslims in India. He advised all Muslims to have four wives to increase the Muslim population and to enhance their influence with the Government. Zafaryab Jilani described the move for a common civil code as anti-Islamic and aimed at finishing Islam in India. Mufti Abdul Razzaq of Bhopal wanted Muslims to wage jihad against the Government and to kill those who opposed Muslim Personal Law. Many more separatist statements were made. If the Muslims were concerned about equality with devotees of other faiths, they would not oppose a common civil code meant for and applicable to all Indians. Instead of opposing it they should grab this opportunity to get into the proposed code all the good things in the Shariat concerning the "high status of women in Islam" about which Muslims are so vociferous."

"Many a time aggrieved parties (like divorced Muslim women) have approached the courts for redressal and many a time the Supreme Court has asked the government to explain the steps it has taken for securing uniformity in the personal laws, particularly those of the Muslims, leading to the enactment of a common civil code for all Indians."

"As the legacy of this scenario, Indian girls are still being sold to West Asian nationals as wives, concubines and slave girls. For example, all the leading Indian newspapers like The Indian Express, The Hindustan Times and The Times of India of 4 August 1991, flashed the news of a sixty year old “toothless” Arab national Yahiya H.M. Al Sagish “marrying” a 10-11 year old Ameena of Hyderabad after paying her father Rs. 6000, and attempting to take her out of the country. Al Sagish has been taken into police custody and the case is in the law-court now. Mr. I.U. Khan has “pointed out that no offence could be made out against his client as he had acted in accordance with the Shariat laws. He said that since this case related to the Muslim personal law which permitted marriage with girls who had attained Puberty (described as over 9 years of age), Al Sagish could not be tried under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Besides Ameena’s parents had not complained.” (Times of India, 14 August 1991). But this is not an isolated case. I was in Hyderabad for about four years, 1979-1983. There I learnt that such “marriages” are common. There are regular agents and touts who arrange them. Poor parents of girls are handsomely paid by foreign Muslims for such arrangements. Every time that I happened to go to the Hyderabad Airlines office or the Airport (which was about at least once a month), I found bunches of old bridegrooms in Arab attire accompanied by young girls, often little girl brides. “A rough estimate indicated that as many as 8000 such marriages were solemnised during the past one decade in Hyderabad alone.” (Indian Express Magazine, 18 August 1991). In short, the sex slave-trade is still flourishing not only in Hyderabad but in many other cities of India after the medieval tradition."

"An early warning against perpetuating the minority complex was sounded in a memorandum submitted to the Constituent Assembly’s committee on minorities by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, a leading member of the Christian community. She said: “The primary duty of the committee appointed to look into the problem of minorities is to suggest such ways and means as will help to eradicate the evil of separatism, rather than expedients and palliatives which might, in the long run, only contribute to its perpetuation.” She added, “Privileges and safeguards really weaken those that demand them…” A distinguished member of another minority community, Muhammad Currimbhoy Chagla, wrote in his autobiography in 1973: “I have often strongly disagreed with the government policy of constantly harping upon minorities, minority status and minority rights. It comes in the way of national unity, and emphasises the differences between the majority community and minority. Of course it may serve well as a vote-catching device to win Muslim votes, but I do not believe in sacrificing national interests in order to get temporary party benefits. Although the Directive Principles of the State enjoin a uniform civil code, the Government has refused to do anything about it on the plea that the minorities will resent any attempt at imposition.” The false equation of secularism and minorityism of the Congress is repeated in the policies of the National Front Government."

"No wonder that in India Muslims want separate schools for their children and claim Urdu as their language. They want their Personal Law (which mainly means polygamy), and resist enactment of a uniform civil code for all. They are against family planning so that their population may grow unchecked. In short, in countries where Muslims are in a minority and the state is not Islamic, they insist on living an alienated, unintegrated and “superior” life by agitating for concessions specified by their Islamic Shariat. No amount of falsification of history can humour them into living with others on terms of equality. Therefore Congress-culture politicians and pseudo-secularists should at least inform the minority whose cause they espouse, but to whom they never dare read a lecture, that secularism and fundamentalism are mutually exclusive, and that in the Indian secular state the Muslims cannot practise their fundamentalism. Furthermore, they can also be told that history can no longer be distorted, that it cannot be made the handmaid of politics, and that therefore they need to feel sorry if not actually repentant about the past misdeeds of Muslims."

"Genuine secular states have equality before the law of all citizens regardless of religion. By contrast, India has different civil codes depending on the citizen's religion. Thus, for Christians it is very hard to get a divorce, Hindus and Muslim women can get one through judicial proceedings, and Muslim men can simply repudiate their wives. The secular alternative, a common civil code, is championed by the Hindu nationalists. It is the so-called secularists who, justifying themselves with specious sophistry, join hands with the most obscurantist religious leaders to insist on maintaining the present unequal system. Likewise, there exists a legal inequality in matters of temple management, pilgrimage subsidies, special autonomy for states depending on their populations' religious composition, and the right to found religious schools; and this inequality is defended by the so-called secularists because it is invariably to the disadvantage of the Hindus. The Hindu nationalists favour the secular alternative of equality regardless of religion."

"Then there is the matter of the separate civil code for the minorities. Marriage and inheritance laws are, perhaps on top of some sacramental dimension, quite secular matters. Recognizing and institutionalizing inequality between the citizens of India in these secular matters on the basis of their religion is definitely a case of constitutional communalism. Or rather, let us not be too harsh on the Constitution itself, for it does call on the law-maker to eventually abolish the religion-based law systems. It is political communalism on the part of the parties that refuse to implement the constitutional provision for the eventual enactment of a common civil code."

"Indeed, over the years I have had many a good laugh at the pompous moralism and blatant dishonesty of India's so-called secularists. Their specialty is to justify double standards, e.g. why mentioning murdered Kashmiri Pandits is “communal hate-mongering” while the endless litany about murdered Gujarati Muslims is “secular consciousness-raising”. Sometimes they merely stonewall inconvenient information, such as when they tried to deny and suppress the historical data about the forcible replacement of a Rama temple in Ayodhya by a mosque: given the strength of the evidence, all they could do was to drown out any serious debate with screams and swearwords. But often they do bring out their specific talents at sophistry, such as when they argue that a Common Civil Code, a defining element of all secular states, is a Hindu communalist notion, while the preservation of the divinely-revealed Shari’a for the Muslims is secular. That’s when they are at their best."

"As a group, the secularists, especially the Leftists, have not summoned the courage to insist that in order to ensure the survival of the secular India state, Muslims should accept one common civil code, and that Article 370 of the Constitution, which concedes special rights to Jammu and Kashmir mainly because it is a Muslim-majority state, should be scrapped... Even so I find it extraordinary that those who call themselves modernizers and secularists-the two terms are interchangeable-should shirk the logic of their philosophy of life."

"[Women in Islamic countries] are exposed to male domination as a rule rather than as an exception... If anyone protests... as I have done, you are sure to be branded as a witch... What I demand is freedom for women from male domination and a uniform code... It that can be construed as blasphemy, I cannot help it."

"In the BJP statements of the last few years the most prominent 'communal' item is the Common Civil Code demand; but pushing that one would be a grave mistake. True, this is an impeccably secular concern, amounting to no more than the implementation of the existing Article 44 of the Constitution.But precisely for these reasons, this initiative should be left to the secularists, whose inaction on this point is a permanent measure of their dishonesty. There are excellent arguments against polygamy and unilateral talaq, but nobody will believe the BJP if it says that it was concerned about the plight of Muslim women."

"Where more than 80 percent of the citizens have already been brought under the codified personal law, there is no justification whatsoever to keep in abeyance, any more, the introduction of the 'uniform civil code' for all the citizens in the territory of India."

"“We would like to State that Article 44 provides that the State shall endeavour to secure for all citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India…There is no necessary connection between religious and personal law in a civilised society. It is a matter of great regret that Article 44 of the Constitution has not been given effect to. Parliament is still to step in for framing a common civil code in the country. A common civil code will help the cause of national integration by removing the contradictions based on ideologies.”"

"[He expressed the hope that Goa's example of a common civil code would one day] awaken the rest of bigoted India."

"It is no matter of doubt that marriage, succession and the like matters of a secular character cannot be brought within the guarantee enshrined under Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution. Any legislation which brings succession and the like matters of secular character within the ambit of Articles 25 and 26 is a suspect legislation."

"The BJP proposal to enact a Common Civil Code in replacement of the existing religion-based Personal Law systems is the very quintessence of secularism. Today, contrary to Mira Kamdar's claim, India is not a secular state, for unlike genuinely secular states, India has no equality before the law regardless of religion. Thus, getting a divorce is extremely difficult for a Christian, is a matter fr judicial proceedings in the case of Hindus or of Muslim women, and is the unilateral exercise of an unfettered right of repudiation in the case of a Muslim man. What the BJP wants is to bring India in line with the secular states of the world by enacting a common law equally applying to all citizens. The qualification of the self-styled secularists as "pseudo-secularists" is definitely justified by the fact that they support the continuation of legal religion-based discrimination all while vilifying the only political force willing to secularize Personal Law."

"First of all, they assume that India is a secular state, which it is not. Every secular state on earth by definition observes equality before the law for every citizen regardless of religion. India, by contrast, has different family law systems (marriage, inheritance) depending on one’s religion, e.g. Muslim men can immediately impose a divorce while all others have to pass judicial procedure (thus also causing discrimination by gender for Muslim men vs. Muslim women). Moreover, it has arrogated the right to reform Hindu law, while it passively abides by the other law systems, e.g. it has abolished Hindu polygamy but continues to allow Muslim polygamy. So, it discriminates between religions. It extends those discriminations legally and constitutionally to the fields of education (where minorities are privileged over the Hindus) and places of worship (where politicians plunder Hindu temple funds while respecting those of churches and mosques, sometimes even financing these out of Hindu temple funds). (Ch 13)"

"So, India is a secular state if all citizens get the same treatment in law regardless of their religion. Is this the case? Of course not: Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsis have different law systems, chiefly because Muslims insist on it. So, contrary to all those fear-mongers’ loud proclamations that “the BJP constitutes a threat to the secular state in India”, firstly, India definitely is not a secular state, and secondly, the BJP wants to enact a Common Civil Code and is thereby the only major party that wants to turn India into a secular state. The other major parties including the long-ruling Congress Party, by contrast, keep on promising their Muslim voters that they will preserve legal Apartheid between the religions and prevent India from becoming a secular state."

"So, the BJP’s demand for a Common Civil Code is effectively buttressed with feminist rhetoric. In Prof. Kapur's spin, this shows how devious and Machiavellistic the Hindu Right really is. In a less partisan explanation, this only shows how the demand for a Common Civil Code is a common demand of different groups. As nationalists, the “Hindu Right” (which calls itself “Hindu nationalist”) care about the oneness of the nation, and that justifies the abolition of divisive religion-based Civil Codes including the Shari’a. As egalitarians, feminists (and normal people in general) want to abolish the sexual inequality inherent in the Shari’a, which they will achieve in a Common Civil Code. So, there are different reasons for abolishing an Indian legal systems that falsely flatters itself to be “secular”. Or in other words: there are several reasons, Hindu-Rightist as well as other, why Prof. Kapur’s defence of the present system is wrong. (Ch 20)"

"In its European countries of origin, secularism (French: laicité) wanted to be a way to contain the Christian Churches, to make and keep the State free from interference by the Church. In the budding United States, the emphasis was slightly different: to keep the Churches free from interference by the State. At any rate, the core idea was separation of Church and State. The most fundamental characteristic of a secular state is the equality of all its citizens before the law, regardless of religion. In that sense, India is not a secular state at all. Its Constitution mandates quite a bit of State interference in religious laws and institutions, at least those of the Hindus, and formally as well as effectively discriminates against its religious majority. It does not satisfy the very first criterion of a secular state, viz. the legal equality of all citizens regardless of religion. On the contrary, in family matters, there are different sets of laws for Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsis. The most famous example is of course that a Muslim man can have four wives, others cannot. The discrimination lies not only in the the State’s perpetuation of a consequential inequality, but also in the genesis of that inequality through State intervention, viz. by the abolition of polygamy where it existed in Hindu society versus its deliberate non-abolition among Muslims. One can recognize an incompetent India-watcher by his pompous claim that “India is secular state”. It is not, period. [...] Thus, in the West, secularism means that all citizens are equal before the law, regardless of their religion; or what Indians call a Common Civil Code. In India, by contrast, all secularists swear by the preservation of the present system of separate religion-based Personal Laws, though they prefer to avoid the subject, hopefully from embarassment at the contradiction. And all Indian secularists swear by the preservation of constitutional, legal and factual discriminations against the Hindu majority. (In case you have recently lived on another planet and don’t believe that there are such discriminations, one example: the Right to Education Act 2006, which imposes some costly duties on schools except minority schools, has led to the closure of hundreds of Hindu schools.)"

"So instead, she explained that the Hindu Right only wanted “formal equality” (understood as “justice to all, appeasement of none”) while the rest wanted “substantive equality”, a position she found far more sophisticated and just. But any law scholar would understand that the law is precisely about “formal” equality. In the real world, one man is rich and another poor, one is talented and another dumb, etc.; but at least in law, they are equal. The law cannot neutralize the inequalities given to men by nature; but the least it can do, is to make men at least “formally” equal. And that is the case in a Common Civil Code, which the BJP advocates and which she therefore considered a “threat to India’s secularism”. [...]"

"This is a defining trait of secular states: equality before the law regardless of one’s religion. It is claimed ad nauseam that “India is a secular state”, but it isn’t. A UCC is not a matter of Hindu Rashtra or so, it is a requirement of secularism. Next time you meet a secularist, ask him what he has done for instituting a UCC. It is his job, not that of the Hindus. No pre-modern Hindu state had a UCC, and Hindus were fine with that. But Hindus have adapted to the modern age: it is discriminatory to treat Muslims as unfit for this modernisation. So, long live the UCC."

"It is not clear who among the bench penned the concluding words of the judgment. What is clear is that whoever they were, are worthy of praise. ‘It is also a matter of regret that Article 44 of our Constitution has remained a dead letter. The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India. A belief seems to have gained ground that it is for the Muslim immunity to take a lead in the matter of reforms of their personal law. A common Civil Code will help the cause of national integration by removing disparate loyalties to laws which have conflicting ideology No community is likely to bell the cat by making gratuitous concessions on this issue. It is the State which is charged with the duty of securing a uniform civil code for the citizens of the country and, unquestionably, it has the legislative competence to do so. A counsel in the case whispered, somewhat audibly, that legislative competence is one thing, the political courage to use that competence is quite another. We understand the difficulties involved in bringing persons of different faiths and persuasions on a common platform, but a beginning has to be made if the Constitution is to have any meaning. Inevitably, the role of the reformer has to be assumed by the courts because it is beyond the endurance of sensitive minds to allow injustice to be suffered when it is so palpable.’"

"The issue of UCC is not Modi's program nor BJP’s. The makers of the Indian constitution have mentioned it in the constitution. These people did not implement it due to vote bank politics. UCC is part of our manifesto. The Supreme Court has mentioned at least two dozen times that UCC must be implemented. UCC is already there in Goa, which has maximum number of minority. Uttarakhand has taken very good steps in this direction. We do not impose things on people, we are evolving."

"That which is in the microcosm, that is also in the macrocosm."

"Integral Humanism is the name we have given to the sum total of various features of Bharatiya Sanskriti (...)"

"The Bharatiya Janata Party's social agenda flows from its ideology of Integral Humanism (...)"

"In their official training programme, all activists of the RSS, BJP and related organizations, i.e. millions of people, today, are taught Deendayal Upadhyaya's philosophy of "Integral Humanism", ... now the official party ideology of the BJP."

"The official doctrine of the BJS/BJP is called Integral Humanism.... it is the alpha and omega of ideological training sessions of RSS and BJP workers."

"(...) Integral Humanism is most akin to the Christian-Democratic movement in Europe."

"Integral Humanism shall be the basic philosophy of the Party."

"I believe in Integral Humanism which is the basic philosophy of Bharatiya Janata Party."

"If you would want to honestly criticize the BJP through a book, it would be Upadhyaya’s ‘Integral Humanism’, but even the sheer mention of that book is absent from the immense majority of ‘expert’ publications about the BJP..."

"Against these two arms of atheism, the core counter-insight from the religiously committed side was that “a humanism which denies man’s religious dimension, is not an integral humanism”. Materialism amputates the natural religious dimension from man, and this has to be restored... So, in name, “integral humanism” had a touch of genius. It sounds so innocent and positive, something that nobody can object to. That is why, in spite of being the official ideology of RSS and BJP, in which every member is trained, it is never mentioned in textbooks by “experts” on Hindutva... Out of an unscholarly political activism, these “experts” prefer to push more negatively-sounding terms, of which “Hindu nationalist” is still the kindest. It is unthinkable to read a textbook on the Labour Party without coming across the word “socialism”, yet so noxious is the intellectual climate in both India and India-watching, that it is entirely the done thing to write expert introductions on the RSS-BJP without mentioning its actual ideology. ... Alright, his term “Integral Humanism” was bright, and the best possible secular-sounding approximation to a perfect translation of the Hindu term Dharma... However, rather than being proud of his Hinduism as the source of integral-humanist values, Upadhyaya, like most Sanghi ideologues ever since, was in the business of downplaying and hiding this Hinduism behind secular terms. His “integral humanism” ended up as the equivalent of the secularists’ “idea of India”. He pioneered what was to become “BJP secularism”."

"Modi has an intellectual anchor in his quest. Deendayal Upadhyaya’s philosophy of Integral Humanism could play an important role in creating a framework for a well-functioning market economy which eschews cronyism and other types of wrongdoing while creating wealth. Integral Humanism has a moral dimension which is important in a country reeling from amoral, if not immoral, capitalists."

"Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both."

"Aug. 5, marks exactly one year since New Delhi revoked Indian-administered Kashmir's special status, splitting the state into two union territories— and Ladakh. [...] Information has been difficult to come by. Local media are often harassed by the police, and international reporters have struggled to get inside. Authorities barred internet access for several months after Aug. 5. While it returned in March, mostly at lowered speeds, the has once again banned high-speed internet for the next few weeks, ostensibly to curb protests and reporting from the region. A survey of Kashmiri college students found 90 percent were in favor of a complete withdrawal of Indian troops. Kashmiri leaders who have expressed anger over the abrogation remain under house arrest, including former Chief Minister ."

"It is a notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the religious susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or by their part in the Shudhi movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans... This was followed by the murder of Lala Nanakchand, a prominent Arya Samajist of Delhi. Rajpal, the author of the Rangila Rasool, was stabbed by llamdin on 6th April 1929 while he was sitting in his shop. Nathuramal Sharma was murdered by Abdul Qayum in September 1934. It was an act of great daring. For Sharma was stabbed to death in the Court of the Judicial Commissioner of Sind where he was seated awaiting the hearing of his appeal against his conviction under Section 195, 1. P. C., for the publication of a pamphlet on the history of Islam. .... This is, of course, a very short list and could be easily expanded. But whether the number of prominent Hindus killed by fanatic Muslims is large or small matters little. What matters is the attitude of those who count towards these murderers. The murderers paid the penalty of law where law is enforced. The leading Moslems, however, never condemned theses criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs and agitation was carried on for clemency being shown to them. As an illustration of this attitude, one may refer to Mr. Barkat Ali, a Barrister of Lahore, who argued the appeal of Abdul Qayum. He went to the length of saying that Qayum was not guilty of murder of Nathuramal because his act was justifiable by the law of the Koran. This attitude of the Moslems is quite understandable. What is not understandable is the attitude of Mr. Gandhi. (p. 157)"

"The relations between the two communities were strained throughout 1923-24. But in no locality did this tension produce such tragic consequences as in the city of Kohat. The immediate cause of the trouble was the publication and circulation of a pamphlet containing a virulently anti-Islamic poem. Terrible riots broke out on the 9th and 10th of September 1924, the total casualties being about 155 killed and wounded... As a result of this reign of terror the whole Hindu population evacuated the city of Kohat... A feature of Hindu-Muslim relations during the year which was hardly less serious than the riots was the number of murderous outrages committed by members of one community against persons belonging to the other. Some of the most serious of these outrages were perpetrated in connection with the agitation relating to Rangila Rasul and Risala Vartman, two publications containing most scurrilous attack on the Prophet Muhammed, and as a result of them, a number of innocent persons lost their lives, sometimes in circumstances of great barbarity... An event which caused considerable tension in April was the murder at Lahore of Rajpal, whose pamphlet Rangila Rasul, containing a scurrilous attack on the Prophet of Islam, was responsible for much of the communal trouble in previous years, and also for a variety of legal and political complications... In Madras a riot, on the 3rd September resulting in one death and injuries to 13 persons was occasioned by a book published by Hindus containing alleged reflections on the Prophet... On the 19th March 1935 a serious incident occurred in Karachi after the execution of Abdul Quayum, the Muslim who had murdered Nathuramal, a Hindu, already referred to as the writer of a scurrilous pamphlet about the Prophet. Abdul Quayum's body was taken by the District Magistrate, accompanied by a police party, to be handed over to the deceased's family for burial outside the city. A huge crowd, estimated to be about 25,000 strong, collected at the place of burial. Though the relatives of Abdul Quayum wished to complete the burial at the cemetery, the most violent members of the mob determined to take the body in procession through the city... Forty-seven rounds were fired by which 47 people were killed and 134 injured. (Chapter 7)"

"The [Arya Samajs'] defiant stand against Islam was increasingly reaping the whirlwind... A pamphlet of the local Sanatana Dharma Sabha... contained an anti-Islamic poem. Frightened by the first Muslim protests, the Hindu minority convened and passed a resolution "regretting their error and requesting pardon". To appease the Muslim protesters, the authorities arrested Jiwan Das... Nevertheless, on 9 and 10 September 1924, Muslim mobs raided the Hindu neighbourhood, killing dozens of Hindus... The most outstanding Arya Samaji of the twentieth century, Swami Shraddananda, was killed by one Abdul Rashid.... When Abdul Rashid was hanged... Muslim clerics all over India held prayer-meetings for his martyred soul. Dr. Ambedkar testifies: "The leading Muslims, however, never condemned these criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs."... In 1933, another Arya Samaji, Nathuramal Sharma, was taken to court for publishing a similar pamphlet as Lekh Ram's... in the courthouse itself he was murdered by one Abdul Qayum."

"Muslim leaders and Stalinist historians were raising a howl about Hindu chauvinism when it came to the notice of Arun Shourie, the Chief Editor of the Indian Express at that time, that some significant passages had been omitted from the English translation of an Urdu book written long ago by the father of Ali Mian, the famous Muslim theologian from Lucknow. He wrote an article, Hideaway Communalism, in the Indian Express of February 5, 1989 pointing out how the passages regarding destruction of Hindu temples and building of mosques on their sites at Delhi, Jaunpur, Kanauj, Etawah, Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura had been dropped from the English translation published by Ali Mian himself. This was a new and dramatic departure from the norm observed so far by the prestigious press. Publishing anything which said that Islam was less than sublime had been taboo for a long time. I was pleasantly surprised, and named Arun Shourie as the Gorbachev of India. He had thrown open the windows and let in fresh breeze in a house full of the stinking garbage of stale slogans."

"After the Babri structure came down, Shri N. Ram thundered at a conference in Delhi that the print media owed it to the nation as much as to itself to black out fully statements and activities of the Hindutva brigade."

"There are definitions of hate speech based on the Khan Market consensus as to who should be allowed to speak and who shouldn’t. If the Khan Market consensus approves, you can speak anything and be applauded for it. But if the Khan Market consensus does not like you, then whatever you say is called hate speech. Today, sharing one’s experience of custodial torture (or just saying ‘I am not a terrorist’) is considered hate speech. But when someone calls Hindus terrorists, that is not hate speech... One person cries and narrates her torture, of being (stripped) naked and ill-treatment, you call that hate speech. And an entire jamaat (community) was called terrorist, called Hindu terrorism, is not hate speech? My quarrel is with the different scales of neutrality."

"Generally, the death of a judge, in what seem to be mysterious circumstances, while presiding over a case against the second most powerful person in the country, and the closest associate of the head of the government, would be make prime-time television in a democracy. Similarly, the allegations of corruption against the family of the same person would have garnered media attention. But recent events in India prove otherwise. [...] But the more damaging development has been the role of the mainstream media in the face of government attempts to muzzle it. Just as in the judge story, there was silence about the corruption story in the media. Even when there was coverage, it was more about the defamation case filed by Mr. Shah rather than the merits of story itself. The rare television channel that has sometimes been critical of the Modi government and faced its wrath for doing so, succumbed, pulling down reportage about the Shah story. This is an extraordinary level of submissiveness displayed by the media. This must also be read in the context of the largest democracy’s abysmal ranking in the World . Last year, India ranked 133 out of 18 countries. And this year, it has declined to 136. Recently, the main mode of against journalists doing investigative stories has been through Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation (SLAPPs), like the one filed by Mr. Shah. Journalists face severe challenges, including physical violence and threat to life, in carrying out their work. [...] So, the emerging “manufacture of consent” in favor of the ruling government does not happen only through active participation, or on criticism by the media, but also as a result of the egregious threats that the media personnel face."

"Jokes making fun of Mr. Modi, or Facebook posts of lay citizens, and films criticizing his government are met with police complaints, legal cases, and threats by the ruling party and its larger ideological family. BJP-led state governments have also introduced draconian bills to curb free speech. India’s democracy is at a critical juncture. After the Emergency declared by the Congress government in 1975 which legally curbed press freedoms, we have not witnessed such levels of abnegation of free speech. (The otherwise-activist Indian judiciary too has maintained a deafening silence on the judge’s death.) It would not be wrong to consider this present conjuncture as marking a deterioration in that regard."

"While all governments, in varying degrees, try to muzzle free speech or physically intimidate journalists, what is radically different under the Modi dispensation is the wider climate of intolerance fostered by the combustible combination of religion and nationalism aided by state power. This has led to unprecedented attacks against religious minorities on accusations like possessing/eating beef or the killings of those who are critics of the government. Dissent and criticism of government has been construed as an anti-national activity clearly demonstrated by the 40 sedition cases filed in 2016."

"If some people do not like a representation of art, there are other ways to counter it. I never support violent attack on artistic freedom. I also do not support the trend of issuing fatwa. But, there are politicians, who support or protest on the basis of religion. Why are rules being tweaked for one particular community in Bengal? Why did Mamata Banerjee’s government never allow me to work there, allow my books to be published? Freedom of expression, the most important character of a democracy, is always under attack for vested political interest. Nobody criticises things neutrally."

"Every ban and censorship hurt. But banishment hurts the most. Banishment took away the ground from beneath my feet. What I need now most is a firm footing to stand up somewhere to fight for the freedom of expression. I was banished from both East and West Bengal."

"The emphasis has been twofold: That the state knows, the state is right, the state must be privileged, and that citizen action is suspect, potentially disruptive and liable to punishment. It is in the backdrop of this subdued rights discourse and de-legitimised agency of the people that the current moment has unfolded wherein criticism is almost seditious, claiming rights for marginalised sections can be termed as waging war against the state and empathising with victims of social injustice is ridiculed or forbidden. The current regime has converted the penchant for sub-democratic state action into a fearsome art."

"The situation in India is far worse than it is in other countries. The French Marxist scholar Maxime Rodinson's biography of the Prophet, Mohammed, is freely available abroad: its English edition is published by Penguin. It traces the revelations which appeared from time to time - specially the ones pertaining to personal law - to the personal dilemmas the Prophet was facing at that turn: such an exercise by an Indian scholar would be shouted down, and his book banned. Ali Dasthti's, Twenty Three Years to which I have referred earlier shows in graphic details how the Prophet's attitude to one thing after another - to power, to the Jews, to those who did not fall in line, to women - changed after his position in Medina became secure... The same book, had it been written by an Indian, would have called forth demands for a ban, demands which would certainly have prevailed."

"And the situation in India has been getting worse over the years. Imagine one of us - who happens to be a Hindu - writing today, [...] There would be a howl - "fascism," "cultural imperalism" - and demands that the book be kept out of schools and universities. Yet the passage is Swami Vivekananda's - and he makes the point repeatedly in almost identical words."

"Imagine a scholar today referring to the "obvious defects of the Koran," to the "crudities of the Koran". (...) Imagine a scholar writing this today - the book could be pounded on, effigies of the author burned…Yet the sentences are from that most effusive - and one of the shallowest - apologies of Islam: M N Roy's The Historical Role of Islam. In brief, the situation has worsened over the decades. No one today could write even this much, and it is only the good fortune that our people do not read these older books which allows them to continue in circulation."

"The point about Khomeini's fatwa is that it has worked: it has intimidated into silence scholars and writers all over the world. And the agitation against Hasan will work too: it took three years for a Muslim scholar to say as much - or, as little - as he did. It will take twice that many years for another one to say half as much."

"And no one has contributed to making these things work, to smothering free inquiry and speech in this vital sphere as the liberals and secularists. We supported the ban on Rushdie's book at that time, writes a leading commentator, as we knew the reactions the book would provoke. Does that "prudence" not go to the fundamentalists to work up a fury each time they want to have their way? Is that not what they are doing now?"

"For example in Pakistan, as recently as October 31, 1991, all the five judges of the Highest Islamic Court ruled that the punishment for defiling the Rasul was death and not life imprisonment as the prevailing penal law provided. But in countries like India where the Shariat law no longer prevails, but where Muslim opinion counts, any critical discussion of the Prophet and Islam is regarded as lacking in good taste. It is unsecular, a great lapse from accepted ideological morality. Critical writings are as a rule edited out and even often banned."

"Are there no limits to what Muslims can demand, and get away with, in the imagined cause of their religion? ... There is no reason why our political leaders should have to start kowtowing and running scared everytime a bunch of semi-literate mullahs gets up and starts making a noise. ... We have just seen Shiv-Sena government in Maharashtra buckle under Muslim pressure and suspend the release of Mani Rattnam’s Bombay. It is a film about inter-religious marriage and the triumph of peace over communal hatred. ... After seeing the film they came up with a list of objections so absurd that they should have been considered ludicrous in our secular land but they have been taken seriously. They object, we are told, to the last shot. The Muslim girl while eloping with her Hindu husband carried the Koran in her hand. This was bad, they said, because it seemed to imply that her marriage had Islamic sanction. ... Nor did they approve of the film’s first scene which shows a woman lifting her burqa off her face.... Offence was taken, we are told, because a Hindu family was shown being burned alive. A Muslim family is also shown being similarly murdered, because this also happened in the terrible riots of 1992, but our Muslim objectors are selective in their disapproval."

"Ram Swarup, now in his seventies, is a scholar of the first rank.... No one has ever refuted him on facts, but many have sought to smear him and his writing. They have thereby transmuted the work from mere scholarship into warning. ... The forfeiture is exactly the sort of thing which had landed us where we are: where intellectual inquiry is shut out; where our traditions are not examined, and reassessed; and where as a consequence there is no dialogue. It is exactly the sort of thing too which foments reaction. (...)"Freedom of expression which is legitimate and constitutionally protected," it [the Supreme Court] declared last year, "cannot be held to ransom by an intolerant group or people." To curtail it in the face of threats of demonstrations and processions or threats of violence "would amount," the Court said, "to the negation of the rule of law and surrender to blackmail and intimidation."

"Do we realise how that hastily-ordered ban [of the book The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie] has changed India forever? .... When the Government promptly submitted to this illiterate hysteria, it convinced [Hindus] that secularism had become a code phrase for Muslim appeasement."

"India's constitution represents the second type. A list of limitations is attached directly to the freedom of expression clause. The list includes expression that interferes with the sovereignty and integrity of India...."

"By 1915, this attitude was changing. I refer to a legal ruling against Arya Samaj preacher Dharm Bir,who was found guilty under Section 298 of “using offensive phrases and gestures... with the deliberate intention of wounding the religious feelings” of the Muslims present in his audience, and under Section 153, for “wantonly provoking the riot which subsequently occurred.”.. Dharm Bir had delivered a public lecture critical of Islam, following which a group of Muslims beat up several Arya Samaj lecturers. Ten Muslims were convicted for rioting, but it was felt that something must be done to punish Dharm Bir and the Arya Samaj. The Arya Samaj was charged, and a judge was brought in who could assure conviction... Winning the case against Dharm Bir required a new position on religious controversy. The judge found it by condemning not only the tone of Dharm Bir’s language, but religious debate itself, when he declared, “logic has never been known to convert any one”; Dharm Bir “does not know that logic has never saved a soul and that religion is rooted in the emotions and sentiments”. Because religion is “rooted in the sentiments,” the judge concluded, religious debate is likely to provoke a riot, and that is all it can do. Religious debate is pointless and therefore unjustifiable; the right publicly to controvert arguments therefore does not properly extend to religion. To enter into religious debate is nothing but a provocation, an act calculated to arouse hatred. Therefore, it is intolerable."

"The association of sentiment and violence enshrined in section 295A was not only a product of concerns with law and order; it was also the result of a critical view of religious proselytizing. Section 295A was in- tended to provide a legal tool to restrain the religious criticism associated with proselytizing by the Arya Samaj."

"In 1927, section 295A was enacted to extend the ease with which “wounding religious feelings” by verbal acts could be prosecuted. The purpose was to curb religious violence by curbing provocative speech. But the strategic field the law put into place worked differently: it extended the strategic value of demonstrating that passions had been aroused that threatened the public peace, in order to induce the government to take legal action against one’s opponents. Section 295A thus gave a fillip to the politics of religious sentiment."

"Because religion is “rooted in the sentiments,” the judge concluded, religious debate is likely to provoke a riot, and that is all it can do. Religious debate is pointless and therefore unjustifiable; the right publicly to controvert arguments therefore does not properly extend to religion. To enter into religious debate is nothing but a provocation, an act calculated to arouse hatred. Therefore, it is intolerable."

"In India, the notion that to be truly tolerant in religion is to refrain from criticism of religion is a widespread secularist ideal. But this ideal has long been conjoined with the assumption that the party criticized will be unable to contain violent reaction. One result has been to give strategic value to violence as a way of proving the point."

"When coordinated acts of violence are justified as the inevitable result of hurt feelings, legal precautions against violent displays of religious passion may be said to have backfired."

"Historically the law was enacted to prohibit books that offended Muslims, and to silence Hindus... Section 295A was not instituted by Hindu society, but against it. It was imposed by the British on the Hindus in order to shield Islam from criticism. Thus...: “In 1927, under pressure from the Muslim community, the administration of the British Raj enacted Hate Speech Law Section 295(A)”... The reason for its enactment was a string of murders of Arya Samaj leaders who polemicized against Islam. This started with the murder of Pandit Lekhram in 1897 by a Muslim because Lekhram had written a book criticizing Islam. A particularly well-publicized murder took place in December 1926, eliminating an important leader, Swami Shraddhananda, writer of Hindu Sangathan, Saviour of the Dying Race (1926), next to VD Savarkar’s Hindutva (1924) the principal ideological statement of Hindu Revivalism. (However, the trigger to the murder lay elsewhere, viz. the protection he gave to a family of converts from Islam to Hinduism.) Moreover, there was commotion at the time concerning a very provocative subject: Mohammed’s sex life, discussed by Mahashay Rajpal in his (ghost-written) book Rangila Rasul, more or less “Playboy Mohammed”, a response to a Muslim pamphlet disparaging Sita as a prostitute. Rajpal would be murdered in 1929...."

"But if the Arya Samaj’s words provoked unwanted Muslims deeds, they were part of the problem and had to be remedied. However, in spite of this intention to prevent riots, the new law did not end the recurring Muslim murders of Arya Samaj leaders until WW2 nor the concomitant riots, as discussed by Dr. Ambedkar. It was the Partition that broke the Arya Samaj’s back, driving it from its power-centre in West Panjab with the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College in Lahore. After Independence, anti-Islamic polemics were blackened as “communal” by an increasingly powerful “secularism”, and thus abandoned...."

"This present-day effect of Section 295A could easily convince the scholars to sign a petition against this undeniably despotic and un-secular law."

"The murder of Shraddhanada finally made the British rulers turn this attitude into law: “In 1927, section 295A was enacted to extend the ease with which ‘wounding religious feelings’ by verbal acts could be prosecuted.” Apart from punishing the murderer, they sought to punish Shraddhanada as well, retro-actively and postumously...."

"Wendy Doniger and the four authors who wrote about the origin and meaning of Section 295A for the Journal of the AAR strictly keep the lid on this crucial fact. None of the contributors has let on that the trigger for this legislation was repeated unidirectional communal murder, viz. of Arya Samaj leaders by Muslims, nor that it was meant to appease the Muslim community. None of them so much as hints at this. Anantanand Rambachan even alleges that “the aggressive party was the Arya Samaj”... American Indologists including Wendy Doniger have always condoned religious discrimination on condition that Hindus are at the receiving end; they only protest when Hindus show initiative..."

"Art. 295A was never the doing of Hindu society. It was imposed by the British on the Hindus in order to shield Islam from criticism. The reason for its enactment was the murder of Pandit Lekhram in 1897 by a Muslim because Lekhram had written a book criticizing Islam. While the British authorities sentenced the murderer, they also sided with him by retro-actively and postumously punishing Lekhram. [...] It demanded the abolition of book-banning legislation, viz. Art. 295A of the Indian Penal Code and Art. 153A of the Criminal Procedure Code. These articles were not enacted by Hindus or in the service of a Hindu cause; on the contrary, they were meant to muzzle Hindus and prevent them from holding Christianity or Islam against the light."

"In the West, the enactment of secularism went hand in hand with deepening criticism of religion, which was pushed from its pedestal and recognized as just another fallible human construct, open to questioning and criticism. In India, by contrast, secularists cheer for the application, formally or in spirit, of Section 295A to outlaw religious criticism – except when it is Hinduism that gets criticized. And that is why the AAR scholars, in solidarity with their Indian secularist friends, have never moved a finger about minority-enforced censorship but made a mountain out of the Doniger molehill."

"Muslims in India have often sought shelter under Sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code (I.P.C.) for preventing every public discussion of their creed in general and of their prophet in particular.1 Quite a few publications which examine critically the sayings and doings of the Prophet or other idolized personalities of Islam, have been proscribed under Section 95 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C.) as a result of pressure exerted by vociferous, very often violent Muslim protests. Little did they suspect that the same provisions of the law could be invoked for seeking a ban on their holy book, the Quran."

"The Lokayata is not an Agama. viz. not a guide to cultural living, not a system of do's and don’ts; hence it is nothing but irresponsible wrangling."

"Lokāyata, ”worldliness”, a sceptical yet ascetic sect, is popular among modern Marxists but despised by rivalling contemporaneous philosophers. This school was radically anti-religious and rejected the concepts of supernatural beings, eternal soul, life after death and reincarnation. Makkhali Gośāla, who preached contemporaneously with the Buddha, compared life, considered a source of endless suffering by the Buddhists, to a fish: alas, it has fishbones, but these can be discarded, and then we can enjoy the fish’s flesh. Similarly, life contains suffering, but this can be minimized and reasonably dealt with, and the rest can be a great source of joy. This outlook can be likened to Epicureanism."

"In fact, the Lokayata operated and developed as a tradition of universal criticism or negativism, without caring to evolve a durable or regular life-order, a socio-cultural order, of its own, with the result that it failed to commend itself to society at large. No wonder that a branch of the Lokayata, the Nilapata school, so called because its members dressed in blue, were responsible for inception of what may be called an inculture, a tradition of wanton living, about which it is said:...That is: ‘How can the Nilapata feel happy till rivers begins to overflow with wine, the mountains are made of meat, and the world is full of women?’"

"Democracy was deep rooted in India because the people had deep respect for the two precious ideals. Even non-believer like 'Charvak' was respected and given the high status of a sage in ancient India."

"The poor Charvaka who had thus remonstrated was unceremoniously lynched by the Brahmin mob, for which act of ‘social gracefulness’ all the Brahmin in the mob were duly compensated by the king with regards and gifts."

"Chârvâkas, a very ancient sect in India, were rank materialists. They have died out now, and most of their books are lost. They claimed that the soul, being the product of the body and its forces, died with it; that there was no proof of its further existence. They denied inferential knowledge accepting only perception by the senses."

"In every country and every human breast there is a natural desire to find a stable equilibrium — something that does not change. We cannot find it in nature, for all the universe is nothing but an infinite mass of changes. But to infer from that that nothing unchanging exists is to fall into the error of the Southern school of Buddhists and the Chârvâkas, which latter believe that all is matter and nothing mind, that all religion is a cheat, and morality and goodness, useless superstitions."

"The books of Veda have two parts; the first, Cura makanda [Karma Kanda], contains the sacrificial portion, while the second part, the Vedanta, denounces sacrifices, teaching charity and love, but not death. Each sect took up what portion it liked. The charvaka, or materialist, basing his doctrine on the first part, believed that all was matter and that there is neither a heaven nor a hell, neither a soul nor a God."

"The Hindu drank in with his mother's milk that this life is as nothing — a dream! In this he is at one with the Westerners; but the Westerner sees no further and his conclusion is that of the Chârvâka — to "make hay while the sun shines". "This world being a miserable hole, let us enjoy to the utmost what morsels of pleasure are left to us." To the Hindu, on the other hand, God and soul are the only realities, infinitely more real than this world, and he is therefore ever ready to let this go for the other."

"There were the Chârvâkas, who preached horrible things, the most rank, undisguised materialism, such as in the nineteenth century they dare not openly preach. These Charvakas were allowed to preach from temple to temple, and city to city, that religion was all nonsense, that it was priestcraft, that the Vedas were the words and writings of fools, rogues, and demons, and that there was neither God nor an eternal soul. If there was a soul, why did it not come back after death drawn by the love of wife and child. Their idea was that if there was a soul it must still love after death, and want good things to eat and nice dress. Yet no one hurt these Charvakas."

"Narendra Modi quoted how Galileo was nearly killed for opposing a belief but in India, when Charvak, an atheist, challenged the Vedas with logic and rejected the idea of reincarnation, he was given the title of ‘rishi’. Indian thought isn’t about tolerance, it’s about acceptance."

"In the foothills of Girnar Hill is the Radha-Damodara temple with beautiful deities of Krishna’s four-armed form. As Lakshmi-Narayana, the deities are formed of the typical black and brown stone, and are described in the Skanda Purana as being self-manifested over 12,000 years ago. Next to the main temple is another for Lord Balarama and Revati, His consort. The original temple at this site is said to have been built 4500 years ago by Vajranath, Lord Krishna’s grandson. Not far away is a place where lived Vallabha, the 16th century Vaishnava acharya."

"The top of Girnar Hill is reached by climbing up 10,000 stone steps that rise 600 meters, to a height of 3666 feet. This was the mountain formerly called Raivataka as mentioned in the Puranas and Mahabharata."

"The author of the history of Mahmood Shah relates, that in the year AH 872 (AD 1468), the King saw the holy Prophet (Mahomed) in a dream, who presented before him a magnificent banquet of the most delicate viands. This dream was interpreted by the wise men as a sign that he would soon accomplish a conquest by which he would obtain great treasures, which prediction was soon after verified in the capture of Girnal....“In the year AH 873 (AD 1469), Mahmood Shah marched towards the country of Girnal, the capital of which bears the same name…“…The victorious army, without attacking the fort of Girnal, destroyed all the temples in the vicinity; and the King sending out foraging parties procured abundance of provisions for the camp…“The King, being desirous that the tenets of Islam should be propagated throughout the country of Girnal, caused a city to be built, which he called Moostufabad, for the purpose of establishing an honourable residence for the venerable personages of the Mahomedan religion, deputed to disseminate its principles; Mahmood Shah also took up his residence in that city…"

"“In AH 871 (AD 1466-67) he started for the conquest of Karnãl [Girnãr] which is now known as JûnãgaDh. It is said that this country had been in the possession of the predecessors of Rãi Mandalîk for the past two thousand years… Sultãn Mahmûd relied on the help of Allãh and proceeded there; on the way he laid waste the land of SoraTh… From that place the Sultãn went towards the temple of those people. Many Rajpûts who were known as Parwhãn, decided to lay down their lives, and started fighting with swords and spears in (defence) of the temple… Sultãn Mahmûd postponed the conquest of the fort to the next year… and returned to Ahmadãbãd.”"

"“In AH 871 (AD 1466-67) the Sultãn led an expedition to Karnãl [Girnãr]… He spread the story that he was out for hunting. Thereafter he suddenly attacked and his army also arrived. He took possession of those treasuries which were beyond estimation. Many people living in those valleys lost their lives. They had a famous idol there. When Mahmûd decided to break it, many members of the Barãwãn clan gathered round it. All of them were slaughtered and the idol was broken…”"

"“Rao Mandalik saw that his fate was sealed. He fled at night to the fort and gave him a battle. When the warfare continued for some time provisions in the fort became scarce. He requested the Sultan in all humility to save his life. The Sultan agreed on condition of his accepting Islam. Rao Mandalik came down from the fort, surrendered the fort’s keys to the Sultan. The Sultan offered recitation of the word of Unity to him to repeat. He instantly recited it. The fort was conquered in the year 877, eight hundred and seventy-seven… In a few days, he populated a city which can be called Ahmedabad and named it Mustafabad. Rao Mandalik was given the title of Khan Jahan with a grant of jagir. He gave away as presents the gold idols brought from the temple of Rao Mandalik to all soldiers…”"

"“Ahmud Shah having a great curiosity to see the hill-fort of Girnal pursued the rebel in that direction… After a short time, the Raja, having consented to pay an annual tribute, made a large offering on the spot. Ahmud Shah left officers to collect the stipulated amount, and returned to Ahmadabad; on the road to which place he destroyed the temple of Somapoor, wherein were found many valuable jewels, and other property.”"

"“In the year 817, eight hundred and seventeen Hijri, he resolved to march with intent of jihad against the unbelievers of Girnar, a famous fort in Sorath. Raja Mandalik fought with him but was defeated and took refuge in the fort. It is narrated that even though that land (region) this time did not get complete brightness form the lamp of Islam, yet the Sultan subdued the fort of Junagadh situated near the foot of Girnar mountain. Most of the Zamindars of Sorath became submissive and obedient to him and agreed to pay tribute. After that, he demolished the temple of Sayyedpur in the month of Jamadi I of the year 818, eight hundred and eighteen Hijri… In the year 823, eight hundred and twenty-three Hijri, he attended to the establishment of administrative control over his dominion. He suppressed refractoriness wherever it was found. He demolished temples and constructed masjids in their places…”364"

"WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:"

"India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States."

"It will thus be seen that every time a proposal for the reform of the constitution comes forth, the Muslims are there, ready with some new political demand or demands. The only check upon such indefinite expansion of Muslim demands is the power of the British Government, which must be the final arbiter in any dispute between the Hindus and the Muslims. Who can confidently say that the decision of the British will not be in favour of the Muslims, if the dispute relating to these new demands was referred to them for arbitration? The more the Muslims demand, the more accommodating the British seem to become. At any rate, past experience shows that the British have been inclined to give the Muslims more than what the Muslims had themselves asked."

"Let the Constitution," he insisted, "be re-examined and re-drafted, so as to establish [a] Unitary form of Government."

"The survival of our democracy and the unity and integrity of the nation depend upon the realisation that constitutional morality is no less essential than constitutional legality. Dharma lives in the hearts of public men; when it dies there, no Constitution, no law, no amendment, can save it."

"It is characteristic of practically all texts lauding India’s “secularism” that this inconvenient truth is omitted, and secularism is attributed to the unquestionable authority of the Constitution and its supposed author, BR Ambedkar. ... “secular” was a product of the Emergency... The word “secular” was not part of India’s political parlance in the days of the Constituent Assembly, and even the Republic (let alone India itself) was not founded as a “secular” state. On the contrary, the Constituent Assembly through its chairman, BR Ambedkar, explicitly rejected the two S words. India became a “secular socialist” republic under the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77) without proper Parliamentary debate. “Secular” is one of the few words in the Constitution that was enacted without democratic basis, and this is only fitting for a “secularism” which has always and unabashedly been despotic and anti-majority. There may be many things wrong with democracy, but it is not anti-majority. Indeed, that is precisely what is wrong with democracy, according to the secularists. [...] Being naturally despotic, the Nehruvian secularists used precisely this intermezzo [the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77)] to insert “secular, socialist” into the text of the Constitution. The declaration of India as a “secular” republic, without a proper parliamentary debate, is thus the only part of the Constitution that is historically undemocratic."

"India only calls itself secular since 1975, when Indira Gandhi’s Emergency dictatorship inserted the words ‘secular, socialist’ into the Constitutional description of India as a ‘democratic, federal republic’. That makes these two words the only ones in the Constitution that never went through a proper parliamentary debate; the least democratic part of it. In the days of the Constituent Assembly, by contrast, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, explicitly refused to include ‘secular’. When, twenty-eight years later, the term did get inserted, it had acquired the meaning ‘anti-Hindu’, yet most Hindus accept the term because they naïvely assume it still has the meaning ‘secular’."

"The Indian State does observe and enforce discrimination on the basis of religion... It is a gross communal inequality and makes a mockery of India's claim to being a secular state."

"The Indian constitution and legislation are a major cause of religious tension precisely because they contain serious discriminations on the basis of religion."

"The Indian Constitution is a mighty case of Hindu accommodation to some minorities' demands for privileges, but that hasn't stopped the Khalistanis from burning it, nor has it stopped the Babri Masjid movement from calling for a boycott of Republic Day 1987."

"In 1977, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi introduced an amendment to the Constitution of India whereby the word 'secular' was formally enshrined into the Preamble. The late L.M. Singhvi, who served as a consultant, refused to sign the Hindi version of the draft that translated 'secular' as 'dharma-nirapeksha' (literally meaning indifferent on dharma). Since dharma is a foundation of society, he said, the correct Hindi translation of 'secular' should be 'pantha-nirapeksha' (i.e., neutral or indifferent with reference to organized sect). Indira Gandhi agreed and (according to one anecdote) handed her pen to him, whereupon Singhvi made the correction on the final draft which is now deposited in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. This means that the government shall be neutral and even indifferent to organized religions. Indian academics, intellectuals, media personnel and politicians dismissed the fine and correct distinction on which Singhvi had insisted."

"On June 26, 1975, prime minister Indira Gandhi announced on the All India Radio that “the president has proclaimed Emergency.” .... The 42nd amendment came soon after. This 20 pages long detailed document gave unprecedented powers to the Parliament. Almost all parts of the Constitution, including the preamble, was changed with this amendment. Thereafter the description of India in the preamble was changed from “sovereign, democratic republic’ to a ‘sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic.”"

"When Hindus believe that the place of birth of Lord Rama was within the disputed site of the Ayodhya temple, such belief partakes the nature of essential part of religion and is protected under Article 25 of the Constitution (right to profess one’s religion), the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has held. ... Such an essential part of religion is constitutionally protected under Article 25."

"“The Indian Church has reason to be glad that the Constitution of the country guarantees her an atmosphere of freedom and equality with other much stronger religious communities. Under the protection of this guarantee she is able, ever since independence, not only to carry on but to increase and develop her activity as never before without serious hindrance or anxiety.”.... “The question was raised in Parliament as to whether the right to propagate religion was applicable only to Indian citizens or also to foreigners residing in India, for example, the missionaries. In March 1954, the Supreme Court of India expressed its opinion that this right was a fundamental one firmly established in the Constitution and thus applied to everyone citizen and non-citizen alike who enjoyed the protection of India’s laws. With this explanation the missionaries were expressly authorised to spread the faith, thus fulfilling the task entrusted to them by the Church.”...."

"We should show how utterly false is the propaganda of the fundamentalists. “The judgment goes against Article 25 which guarantees freedom of religion,’ they said in the case of Shah Bano, they say now in the case of Justice Tilhari. In fact, Article 25 makes freedom of religion subject to public order, morality and health and the other provisions of the Fundamental Rights part of the Constitution—the right to equality and the rest—all of which are violated by the talaq-power. The same article specifically provides that nothing in regard to freedom of religion shall affect the power of the state to make any law to regulate or restrict, inter alia, any secular activity of any religious group, nor to provide for social welfare and reform. ‘But no such law can be passed because of the Shariat Act of 1937,’ they say. It isn’t just that if that Act restricts the power of the state in ways not permitted by the Constitution then that provision of the Act is ultra vires and void.’ The fact is that the Shariat Act imposes no restriction of the sort at all. As I have pointed out earlier in A Secular Agenda the original bill provided, ‘Notwithstanding any custom or usage or law to the contrary’ in matters like marriage and divorce, where the parties are Muslim, shariah shall apply. But the words ‘or law’ were specifically dropped, and so since 1937 the Act has only said, ‘Notwithstanding any custom or usage to the contrary... the Shariat shall apply.’ Wherever there is a law to the contrary, it is the law which is to prevail. That is so manifestly the position. And yet the denunciation proceeds, ‘It violates Articles 25, it is contrary to the Shariat Act.’ The liberal must nail these gross misrepresentations, so that the poor and ignorant masses are not further misled and inflamed."

"This is borne out from the discussions that took place in the Constituent Assembly when this Article 25 of the Constitution (Article 19 of the Draft Constitution) was being considered. Dealing with the scope of Article 25 (then Article 19) Shri K. Santhanam, Lieut. Governor of Vindhya Pradesh, then a member of the Drafting Committee, spoke as follows:- ...“Sir, some discussion has taken place on the word ‘propagate’. After all, propagation is merely freedom of expression. I would like to point out that the word ‘convert’ is not there. Mass conversion was a part of the activities of the Christian Missionaries in this country and great objection has been taken by the people to that. Those who drafted this constitution have taken care to see that no unlimited right of conversion has been given. People have freedom of conscience and, if any man is converted voluntarily owing………… to freedom of conscience, then well and good. No restrictions can be placed against it. But if any attempt made by one religious community or another to have mass conversions through undue influence either by money or by pressure or by other means, the State has every right to regulate such activity. Therefore, I submit to you that this article, as it is, is not so much an article ensuring freedom, but toleration for all, irrespective of the religious practice or profession. And this toleration is subject to public order, morality and health. “Therefore, this article has been very carefully drafted and the exceptions and qualifications are as important as the right it confers. Therefore, I think the article as it stands is entitled to our wholehearted support.”"

"The interpretation of Article 25 of the Constitution came before the High Court of Bombay in a different context. And it may not be out of place to quote the following observation from their judgment in Civil Application No. 880 and Miscellaneous Application No. 212 of 1952, dated the 12th September 1952, reported in A.I.R. 1953, Bombay, page 242. Chagla, Chief Justice says:- “(4) It may be said that both Articles 25 and 26 deal with religious freedom, but, as I shall presently point out, religious freedom, as contemplated by our Constitution, is not unrestricted freedom. The religious freedom which has been safeguarded by the Constitution is religious freedom which must be envisaged in the context of a secular State. It is not every aspect of religion that has been safeguarded nor has the Constitution provided that every religious activity cannot be interfered with.” (page 244). “Article 25 protects religious freedom as far as individuals are concerned. The right is not only given to the citizens of India but to all persons, and the right is to profess, practise and propagate religion. But here again the right is not an unrestricted right. It is a right subject to public order, morality and health, and further it permits the State to make any law regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity, although it may be associated with religious practice, and there is a further right given to the State and that is that the State can legislate for social welfare and reform even though in doing so it may interfere with the profession, practice and propagation of religion by an individual.” (page 244.) In the same judgment, Justice Shah says - “Article 25 has conferred upon the citizens and others residing within the State freedom to profess, practise and propagate religion. That is subject to the legislative power of the State Legislature to legislate so as to regulate or restrict the activity of any person which may be associated with religious practices. The right, therefore, which is conferred by Article 25 is not an absolute or unfettered right of freedom of professing or practising or propagating religion, but it is subject to legislation by the State limiting or regulating any activity, economic, financial, political or secular, associated with religious practice. Similarly, that right is also subject to the social welfare and reform legislation of the State. Therefore, Article 25, while conferring a right upon the citizens and other freely to profess, practise, and propagate their religion, does not confer upon the citizens and others an unfettered right to carry on economic, financial, political or secular activities in association with religious practices, nor does it prevent the State from passing any legislation for purposes of social welfare and reforms, even though such legislation might directly or indirectly be inconsistent with the religious beliefs of some of the religious denominations.” (page 252-A)."

"“We have no doubt that it is in this sense that the word ‘propagate’ has been used in Article 25(1), for what the Article grants is not the right to convert another person to one’s own religion, but to transmit or spread one’s religion by an exposition of its tenets. It has to be remembered that Article 25(1) guarantees “freedom of conscience” to every citizen, and not merely to the followers of one particular religion, and that, in turn, postulates that there is no fundamental right to convert another person to one‘s own religion because if a person purposely undertakes the conversion of another person to his religion, as distinguished from his effort to transmit or spread the tenets of his religion, that would impinge on the “freedom of conscience” guaranteed to all the citizens of the country alike... “We find no justification for the view that if Article 22 grants a fundamental right to convert a person to one’s own religion, it has to be appreciated that the freedom of religion enshrined in the Article is not guaranteed in respect of one religion only, but concerns all religions alike, and it can be properly enjoyed by a person, if he exercises his rights in a manner commensurate with the like freedom of persons following other religions. What is freedom for one is freedom for the other in equal measure, and can therefore be no such thing as a fundamental right to convert any person to one’s own religion.”"

"The Indian Constitution has in effect given less rights to the Hindus ... in several matters. Under Article 30 of the Constitution, minorities have got the most precious right of running educational institutions in accordance with their own cultures and values, but Hindus have been denied this right. ... You cannot find such a perverse provision in the constitution of any independent nation of the world. ... If anybody wants to run in India today a school that imparts education in Islamic or Christian theology, the Central and State Governments will be giving it grants, maybe they would even meet the entire expenses of the school.... But start a school where you want to educate ... about Hindu Dharma and culture ... the burden of funding your school will have to be shouldered by ... voluntary organizations."

"Swaminathan Gurumurthy explains:... I am convinced that the Hindus are politically discriminated against. I can prove this with reference to our Constitution. .... Article 30 says that every minority group has the right to establish and run educational institutions of its choice. (...) Jagmohan... sees a 'need for having a close look at the unhealthy and unwholesome implications of Article 30', at the 'disintegrative impact which Article 30 could have on the Indian state in general and Hindu society in particular'."

"Hindu [educational] institutions have no fundamental right to compensation in case of compulsory acquisition of their property by the state... a lasting solution to this problem lies only in amending Article 30 of the Constitution..."

"Especially the CPM government in West Bengal has been ruthlessly using the constitutional discrimination against Hindu schools for justifying take-overs... Article 30 is far more unjust and harmful than Article 370 which gives a special status to Kashmir. You can better lose that piece of territory than to lose your next generations. It is also a good exercise in separating the genuine secularists from the Hindu-baiters. The demand for equality between all religions in education merely seeks the abrogation of an injustice against the Hindus, so it cannot be construed as directed against the minorities. It wants to stop a blatant case of discrimination on the basis of religion, so everyone who comes out in support of the present form of Article 30, will stand exposed as a supporter of communal discrimination. It is truly a watershed issue."

"I have said many times in my talks that Ramakrishna Mission is the real crest jewel of Hinduism.... But if the other religious minorities are allowed to run their educational institutions, why are Hindus being discriminated against? My view is that there should be no reverse discrimination on the basis of religion. It should be uniform."

"An active communalism not only postulates that people who share a religion, have common secular interests ; it also grants them (or withholds from them) secular rights on the basis of their belonging to a given religion. Therefore, it is certainly a case of active communalism when we find the secular Constitution of India (which limits its own authority to secular matters), in its Article 30, guaranteeing the secular right to set up educational institutions of their choice exclusively to minorities, including religious minorities. This case of discrimination against the majority community is outright communalism. Yet, no secularist raises his voice against it. On the contrary, when pressed for an opinion, they support it."

"No state-subsidized school teaches Hindu religion... By contrast, state-subsidized schools can be Christian or Muslim in character, both in their selection of teachers and students and in their curriculum."

"With government money comes government control” is an axiom in any country. But the situation in India is unique with regard to minority religions. Under Article 30 of the constitution, “minority” religions are allowed to run educational institutions free from government control, but remain equally eligible for government funding as are institutions run by members of the “majority” religion. For the purposes of the constitution, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs are considered “Hindus” and hence part of the majority religion. Effectively the provision applies only to Muslims, Christians, and anyone who can get themselves declared a minority religion. One strange consequence of this is that the Vira Saivites of South India successfully argued earlier this century for minority status..."

"Hindu society is guilty of trying to manage its own affairs at its own sacred site, so it deserves to be punished with administrative restrictions on its access to the Rama-Janmabhoomi, and perhaps with further judicial restrictions later. The judges simply confirm what is explicitly laid down in article 30 of the Constitution: minorities enjoy privileges which are denied to Hindus, including the non-interference by the government in the affairs of their places of worship. Hindus have no right to complain when the government takes over Hindu temples, nor when it works hand-in-glove with Islamic activists trying to take over a Hindu sacred site. They should be satisfied with the status of second-class citizens, to which they have been so well accustomed by centuries of colonial rule, Islamic as well as Christian."

"In the 1980s, when the Ramakrish­na Mission deemed it necessary to declare itself a non-Hindu minority (a self-definition challenged in court by its own members and struck down) in order to prevent the West Bengal government from nationalizing its schools.[1] Art.30 constitutes a very serious discrimination on grounds of religion, and is in conflict with the professed secular character of the Indian Republic. In no democratic country would a majority community tolerate such discrimination, and it says a lot about the stranglehold which the secularist intelligentsia has on public discourse that this article hardly ever figures in debates on secularism and communalism. It also says a lot about the meekness of the Hindus in general and about the incompetence of the Hindutva movement in particular. Amending Art.30 to extend the privileges of the minorities to every community including the Hindus would benefit Hindu society as a whole, would terminate a humiliating and damaging inequality, but would not affect the minorities; they retain the rights conceded to them in the present version of Art.30... Article 30 is the Constitutional bedrock of a considerable list of similar anti-Hindu discriminations.[4] Among them is the unequal treatment of Hindu and non-Hindu places of worship. Muslims have full control of their mosques, Christians have full control of their churches, but Hindus are systematically deprived of the control of their temples. Recently the authorities tried (unsuccessfully) to have the Shirdi Sai Baba temple in Hyderabad declared a Hindu temple, because that would allow them to take it over and do what they have been doing everywhere to Hindu temples: siphon the income off to their own pockets or to other non-Hindu purposes. This is a major factor in the dire poverty which Hindu temple priests (whose wages have not been adjusted for decades) and their families suffer."

"This situation is simply not right, and should be redressed. Now that there is a government claiming some kind of commitment to Dharma, or even just to genuine secularism and fairness, nothing should stand in the way of amending the laws and the articles of the Constitution that stifle dharmic education. These are particularly Art. 28, which prohibits the imparting of “religion” by schools or institutions partly or wholly subsidized by the state and Art. 30, which ensures the “right of minorities to establish educational institutions”. It doesn’t mention the majority but is usually interpreted as withholding the same right from the majority. This is the main reason why the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Lingayats and the Jains have demanded (and usually acquired) minority status, so as to immunize their institutions from interference by the authorities. The article as it stands or as it is usually interpreted in the most tangible reason for Sampadayas to leave the Hindu fold. It is by definition anti-secular. ... Or if you prefer a Vedic myth: the waters were withheld by a dragon, who imposed increasing drought on suffering humanity, but then Indra slew the dragon and released the waters. Can a BJP Prime Minister become this Indra and release the waters of educational rights, withheld by the secularist dragon, over the Hindus?"

"Instead, the BJP ought first of all to take up an issue which really matters for Hindu communal life abolishing the legal and constitutional discriminations against the Hindu majority, most urgently those in education and temple management. The constitutional bedrock of these discriminations is Article 30, which accords to the minorities the right to set up and administer their own schools and colleges, preserving their communal identity (through the course contents and by selectively recruiting teachers and students), all while receiving state subsidies. That right is not guaranteed to the majority, but should be.... The BJP does not deserve to get a single Hindu vote if it doesn't address to this injustice."

"Article 30 gives minorities the right to set up and administer their own government-aided educational institutions, whereas Hindus can only have secular schools... This blatant discrimination exists not only in the cold print of the Constitution, but is also an undeniable fact of life. Hindu organizations like the Arya Samaj and the Ramakrishna Mission have had to go to court to ask recognition as religious minorities in order to gain rights denied to them as Hindu bodies."

"One wonders how long it will take for the Government of the day to implement the mandate of the framers of the Constitution under Article 44. ... There is no justification in delaying indefinitely the introduction of a uniform personal law."

"As a group, the secularists, especially the Leftists, have not summoned the courage to insist that in order to ensure the survival of the secular India state, Muslims should accept one common civil code, and that Article 370 of the Constitution, which concedes special rights to Jammu and Kashmir mainly because it is a Muslim-majority state, should be scrapped... Even so I find it extraordinary that those who call themselves modernizers and secularists-the two terms are interchangeable-should shirk the logic of their philosophy of life."

"An Anti-Common Civil Code Convention was held by Muslims at the Talkatora Indoor Stadium in New Delhi on July 4, 1995. The Convention demanded that the Muslims should be exempted from the purview of Article 44 of the Constitution which envisages such a code. Asad Madani, the chief of the Jamiat, called the demand for a common civil code a conspiracy to finish off the Muslims in India. He advised all Muslims to have four wives to increase the Muslim population and to enhance their influence with the Government. Zafaryab Jilani described the move for a common civil code as anti-Islamic and aimed at finishing Islam in India. Mufti Abdul Razzaq of Bhopal wanted Muslims to wage jihad against the Government and to kill those who opposed Muslim Personal Law. Many more separatist statements were made. If the Muslims were concerned about equality with devotees of other faiths, they would not oppose a common civil code meant for and applicable to all Indians. Instead of opposing it they should grab this opportunity to get into the proposed code all the good things in the Shariat concerning the "high status of women in Islam" about which Muslims are so vociferous."

"Many a time aggrieved parties (like divorced Muslim women) have approached the courts for redressal and many a time the Supreme Court has asked the government to explain the steps it has taken for securing uniformity in the personal laws, particularly those of the Muslims, leading to the enactment of a common civil code for all Indians."

"Fifty-three years after India adopted a Constitution which calls on all citizens to “develop the scientific temper” (Art. 51.A.h), the country’s academic positions are occupied by crackpots."

"The recent five-judge bench Supreme Court judgment in Chebrolu Leela Prasad Rao and Ors v State of AP and Ors, shows us once again how little the 5th Schedule of the Indian constitution which is meant to protect adivasi rights is understood. The reasoning in the judgment – which struck down an Andhra Pradesh government order from 2000 providing 100% reservation for Scheduled Tribe teachers in of the state – moves perilously close to dismantling the entire edifice of the 5th Schedule. If 100% reservation for teaching jobs is not permissible, the next step will be for someone to argue against the ban on alienation of tribal land, or overturn the Samata judgment prohibiting mining leases being given to non-tribals in 5th Schedule Areas in undivided Andhra Pradesh. After all, both these ‘discriminate’ against non-tribals. As non-adivasis from other districts flood scheduled areas leading to clear demographic change, the clamour to do away with the protective provisions of the 5th Schedule is only getting louder."

"The Supreme Court judgment came in response to an appeal by non-tribals against the majority 2001 high court judgment, which upheld the G.O. of 2000. The Supreme Court verdict essentially replicates the minority view in the high court in favour of non-tribals. The court framed four questions for itself: • the first deals with the power of the governor in 5th Schedule areas to make laws, and whether this can override Part III of the constitution or fundamental rights; • the second, whether 100% reservation is constitutionally permissible; • the third, whether the GO involves a classification under Article 16 (1) dealing with equal access to state employment, rather than under 16 (4) which provides for reservation; • the fourth, to do with the reasonableness of the eligibility requirement for reservation, i.e. continuous residence in the area since 1950. In answering each of the questions, sadly, the court shows itself unmindful of the realities of the country and the history of the constitution it has inherited. [...] It is important to remember that when the law-making power of the governor under the 5th Schedule was discussed in the constituent assembly’s Sub-Committee on Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas, the concern raised was not whether s/he could or should make fresh law, but that this power should not be used undemocratically, exercised over and above the elected legislature. It is for this reason that a Tribes Advisory Council was created and the governor was required to refer matters to it. (Para 11b of the sub-committee report). In this case, the Tribes Advisory Council had concurred with the 100% rule. On the question it posed to itself – of whether the legislative powers of the governor under Section 5 of the 5th Schedule could override fundamental rights – the Supreme Court answered in the negative."

"Article 351 of Constitution of India reads “It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages of India specified in the Eighth Schedule, and by drawing, wherever necessary or desirable, for its vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages.""

"The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script... for a period of fifteen years from the commencement of this Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union..."

"Equal status to all states and equal rights to all citizens is the BJP secularism."

"The separate status for the state of Kashmir (Article 370) is again a discrimination in secular matters on the basis of religion, viz. its being a state with a Muslim majority. Nehru sycophants have tried to explain this irresponsible and communalist Article as follows: "The special problems of Jammu and Kashmir do not arise only out of the fact of its being a Muslim-majority state. It is also a state coveted by a foreign power which has thrice gone to war with India to capture the state,... whose territory is partly under hostile foreign occupation,... which is geopolitically located in the cockpit of international intrigue." ... But our Nehruvian knows it all better: "It is with a view to addressing ourselves to these very special problems... that the constitutional device of Article 370 was evolved." If that is true, then we must recognize in all sincerity that this device has been ineffective. It has not stopped the Chinese from annexing parts of Karakoram and Ladakh, it has not stopped Pakistan from invading it twice more, it has not prevented the ongoing skirmishes over the Siachen glacier, it has not prevented the general spread of secessionism, it has not prevented the Kashmiri Muslims from practicing majorityism at the expense of the Hindu and Buddhist areas of Jammu and Ladakh and from hounding out the Hindu minority of the Kashmir valley, and it has not given private investors the confidence to go in and bring some genuine economical development. Short, in every geopolitical, communal and even economical respect, it has been an outrageous failure."

"The question, however, is whether Modi had any choice in Kashmir and whether, over time, the revocation of an article conceived as temporary breaks the Kashmiri logjam, pries open the stranglehold of corrupt local elites and offers a better future. I think it might. .... “We revoked a temporary constitutional provision that slowed down development, created alienation, led to separatism, fed terrorism and ended up as a deadly national security problem,” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the external affairs minister of India, told me. “We know the last 70 years did not work in Kashmir. It has bled us. It would be Einsteinian insanity to do the same thing and expect a different result.”... Modi will not turn back from his elimination of Kashmir’s autonomy. That phase of Indian history is over. Trump and Modi are both forceful, media-savvy politicians. But they are not alike. Modi, a self-made man from a poor family, is measured, ascetic, not driven by impulse. Trump was born on third base. He’s erratic, guided by the devouring needs of his ego. I’d bet on Modi to transform India, all of it, including the newly integrated Kashmir region."

"There was not the idea of 'interest' in India as in Europe, i.e., each community was not fighting for its own interest; but there was the idea of Dharma, the function which the individual and the community has to fulfil in the larger national life. There were caste organizations not based upon a religio-social basis as we find nowadays; they were more or less guilds, groups organized for a communal life. There were also religious communities like the Buddhists, the Jains, etc. Each followed its own law'Swadharma'unhampered by the State. The State recognized the necessity of allowing such various forms of life to develop freely in order to give to the national spirit a richer expression.... Then over the two there was the central authority, whose function was not so much to legislate as to harmonize and see that everything was going on all right. It was generally administered by a Raja; in cases it was also an elected head of the clan, as in the instance of Gautama Buddha's father. Each ruled over either a small State or a group of small States or republics. The king was not a law-maker and he was not at the head to put his hand over all organizations and keep them down. If he interfered with them he was deposed because each of these organizations had its own laws which had been established for long ages.... The machinery of the State also was not so mechanical as in the West... it was plastic and elastic.... This organization we find in history perfected in the reign of Chandragupta and the Maurya dynasty. The period preceding this must have been a period of great political development in India. Every department of national life, we can see, was in the charge of a board or a committee with a minister at the head, and each board looked after what we now would call its own department and was left free from undue interference of the central authority. The change of kings left these boards untouched and unaffected in their work. An organization similar to that was found in every town and village and it was this organization that was taken up by the Mahomedans when they came to India. It is that which the English also have taken up. The idea of the King as the absolute monarch was never an Indian idea. It was brought from Central Asia by the Mahomedans.... The English in accepting this system have disfigured it considerably. They have found ways to put their hand on and grasp all the old organizations, using them merely as channels to establish more thoroughly the authority of the central power. They discouraged every free organization and every attempt at the manifestation of the free life of the community. Now attempts are being made to have the cooperative societies in villages, there is an effort at reviving the Panchayats. But these organizations cannot be revived once they have been crushed; and even if they revived they would not be the same.... If the old organization had lasted it would have been a successful rival of the modern form of government.... You need not come back to the old forms, but you can retain the spirit which might create its own new forms.... It has been a special feature of India that she has to contain in her life all the most diverse elements and assimilate them. This renders her problem most intricate.... The 'nation idea' India never had. By that I mean the political idea of the nation. It is a modern growth. But we had in India the cultural and spiritual idea of the nation..."

"I do not regard business as something evil or tainted, any more than it is so regarded in ancient spiritual India.... All depends on the spirit in which a thing is done, the principles on which it is built and the use to which it is turned. I have done politics and the most violent kind of revolutionary politics, ghoram karma, and I have supported war and sent men to it, even though politics is not always or often a very clean occupation nor can war be called a spiritual line of action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human work, sarvakarmani. Do you contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was mistaken or wrong in principle?... I do not regard the ascetic way of living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by the Divine.... The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmani, is un-Indian, European or western and unspiritual."

"Politics is the work of the Kshatriya and it is the virtues of the Kshatriya we must develop if we are to be morally fit for freedom."

"“At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft, her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilisation were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra. No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants…There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilisation is its humanity.” (pp.8-9)]."

"Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don't be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide' - but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically - nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit."

"The Indian system of counting is probably the most successful intellectual innovation ever devised by human beings. It has been universally adopted. ...It is the nearest thing we have to a universal language."

"Medieval Indian mathematicians, such as Brahmagupta (7th century), Mahavira (9th century) and Bhüskara (19th century), made several discoveries which in Europe were not known until the Renaissance or later, They understood the import of positive and negative quantities, evolved sound systems of extracting square and cube roots, and could solve quadratic and certain types of indeterminate equations."

"Through the necessity of accurately laying out the open-air site of a sacrifice Indians very early evolved a simple system of geometry, but in the sphere of practical knowledge the-world owes most to India in the realm of mathematics, which were developed in Gupta times to a stage more advanced than that reached by any other nation of antiquity. ‘The success of Indian mathematics was mainly due to the fact that the Indians had a clear conception of abstract number, as distinct from numerical quantity of objects or spatial extension. While Greek mathematical science was largely based on mensuration and geometry, India transcended these conceptions quite early, and, with the aid of a simple numeral notation, devised a rudimentary algebra which allowed more complicated calculations than were possible to the Greeks, and led to the study of number for its own sake."

"The cord stretched in the diagonal of an oblong produces both [areas] which the cords forming the longer and shorter sides of an oblong produce separately"

"It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by ten symbols, each receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit."

"In the Surya Siddhanta is contained a system of trigonometry which not only goes beyond anything known to the Greeks, but involves theorem which were not discovered in Europe till two centuries ago."

"We owe a lot to the Indians who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."

"In order to instill a proper and well-founded pride in Hindus, it is (once more) most important to restore the truth about Hindu history, especially about Hindu society's glorious achievements. In technology, it cannot match China, which was the world leader until a mere three, four centuries ago. But in abstract sciences like linguistics, logic, mathematics, Hindu culture has been the chief pioneer."

"In the Vedic Age, India was very religious, but it was also ahead of the rest in mathematics and astronomy. Thus, the geometry of the Shulba Sutras, geometrical appendices to the manuals of ritual (Shrauta Sutras), include the oldest known formulation of the theorem named after Pythagoras, developed in the context of Vedic altar-building. Modern Hindus are fond of recalling this scientific element in their tradition, e.g. by quoting Carl Sagan: “Hindu cosmology gives a time-scale for the earth and the universe which is consonant with that of modern scientific cosmology”, as opposed to the limited Biblical-Quranic cosmology, which was protected against more far-sighted alternatives by a vigilant religious orthodoxy."

"In the Shulba Sutra appended to Baudhayana’s Shrauta Sutra, mathematical instructions are given for the construction of Vedic altars. One of its remarkable contributions is the theorem usually ascribed to Pythagoras, first for the special case of a square (the form in which it was discovered), then for the general case of the rectangle: “The diagonal of the rectangle produces the combined surface which the length and the breadth produce separately.”"

"In the whole history of Mathematics, there has been no more revolutionary step than the one which the Indian made when they invented the sign ‘0’ for the empty column of the counting frame."

"Nesselmann observes that we can, as regards the form of exposition of algebraic operations and equations, distinguish three historical stages of development... 1. ...Rhetoric Algebra, or "reckoning by complete words." ...the absolute want of all symbols, the whole of the calculation being carried on by means of complete words, and forming... continuous prose. ...2. ...Syncopated Algebra... is essentially rhetorical and therein like the first in its treatment of questions, but we now find for often-recurring operations and quantities certain abbreviational symbols. ...3. ...Symbolic Algebra ...uses a complete system of notation by signs having no visible connection with the words or things which they represent, a complete language of symbols, which supplants entirely the rhetorical system, it being possible to work out a solution without using a single word of the ordinary written language, with the exception (for clearness' sake) of a conjunction here and there, and so on. Neither is it the Europeans posterior to the middle of the seventeenth century who were the first to use Symbolic forms of Algebra. In this they were anticipated many centuries by the Indians."

"It is clear how much we owe to this brilliant civilization, and not only in the field of arithmetic; by opening the way to the generalization of the concept of the number, the Indian scholars enabled the rapid development of mathematics and exact sciences. The discoveries of these men doubtless required much time and imagination and, above all, a great ability for abstract thinking. These major discoveries took place within an environment which was at once mystical, philosophical, religious, cosmological, mythological and metaphysical."

"Ancient Indian culture has regarded the science of numbers as the noblest of its arts … A thousand years ahead of Europeans, Indian savants knew that zero and infinity were mutually inverse notions. In short, Indian science was born out of a mystical and religious culture and the etymology of the Sanskrit word used to describe numbers and the science of numbers bears witn The early passion which Indian civilization had for high numbers was a significant factor contributing to the discovery of the place-value system, and not only offered the Indians the incentive to go beyond the calculable physical world, but also led to an understanding much earlier than in our civilization of the notion of mathematical infinity itself."

"Because the Greeks were ‘ingenious and inventive’, they must have developed mathematics, and that is what we must assume even in the absence of evidence. And because the Hindus were backward and primitive, they could not have created mathematics, and that is what we must assume even in the presence of evidence."

"C'est de l'Inde que nous vient l'ingénieuse méthode d'exprimer tous les nombres avec dix caractères, en leur donnant à la fois, une valeur absolue et une valeur de position; idée fine et importante, qui nous paraît maîntenant si simple, que nous en sentons à peine, le mérite. Mais cette simplicité même, et l'extrême facilité qui en résulte pour tous les calculs, placent notre système d'arithmétique au premier rang des inventions utiles; et l'on appréciera la difficulté d'y parvenir, si l'on considère qu'il a échappé au génie d'Archimède et d'Apollonius, deux des plus grands hommes dont l'antiquité s'honore."

"My confidence in our shared future is grounded in my respect for India’s treasured past—a civilization that has been shaping the world for thousands of years. Indians unlocked the intricacies of the human body and the vastness of our universe. And it is no exaggeration to say that our information age is rooted in Indian innovations—including the number zero."

"The science of numbers is used in all transactions whether earthly or Vedic, meditation or business, in the science of love, in the art of cooking, in economics and statecraft, in music and medicine, in theatre, architecture and all such things. (9-10) In prosody, in poetics and poetry, in logic, grammar and such like, in the presentation of the qualities of various arts, mathematics is held in esteem. For the movements of the sun and stars, for eclipses and planetary motion, for the three significant questions and the course of the moon, for all these connections it is used (11-12). The number, diameter and perimeter of islands, of oceans and mountains, for the dimensions of rows of buildings of the earth’s inhabitants, of the space between the worlds, of the world of light, for the worlds of devas, for the dimensions of the dwellers in hell; for measurements of all sort and voluminous evidence, all these are made out by means of computation (13- 14). The organization of living beings, the length of their lives, their eight attributes and other similar things, their travel and cohabitation and such other things, all depend on mathematics. What more can be said? All there is in the three worlds, moving or unmoving, all that cannot be described without mathematics (15-16)."

"To the Hindus is due the invention of algebra and geometry, and their application to astronomy."

"I once heard, and I think it is true, that only one man in the world—some Indian mathematician—understood the mathematics of string theory in eleven-dimensional space, and he dreamed it."

"We know that the trigonometric sine is not mentioned by Greek mathematicians and astronomers, that it was used in India from the Gupta period onwards (third century).... The only conclusion possible is that the use of sines is an Indian development and not a Greek one. But Tannery, persuaded that the Indians could not have made any mathematical inventions, preferred to assume that the sine was a Greek idea not adopted by Hipparchus, who gave only a cable of chords. For Tannery, the fact that the Indians knew of sines was sufficient proof that they must have heard about them from the Greeks."

"It is more likely that Pythagoras was influenced by India than by Egypt. Almost all the theories, religions, philosophical and mathematical taught by the Pythagoreans, were known in India in the sixth century B.C., and the Pythagoreans, like the Jains and the Buddhists, refrained from the destruction of life and eating meat and regarded certain vegetables such as beans as taboo" "It seems that the so-called Pythagorean theorem of the quadrature of the hypotenuse was already known to the Indians in the older Vedic times, and thus before Pythagoras."

"Many of the key results of mathematics, some of which are at the very “core” of modern day mathematics, are of Indian origin. ...‘I wish to conclude initially by simply saying that the work of Indian mathematicians has been severely neglected by western historians.’...‘it is likely European scholars are resistant due to the way in which the inclusion of non-European, including Indian, contributions shakes up views that have been held for hundredsof years, and challenges the very foundations of the Eurocentric ideology."

"The Hindus no less than the Greeks have shared in the work of constructing scientific concepts and methods in the investigation of physical phenomena , as well as of building up a body of positive knowledge which has been applied to industrial technique; and Hindu scientific ideas and methodology (e.g. the inductive method or methods of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia—in the East as well as the West—in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen empire."

"However, Seidenberg was told by the indologists that these Sutras, or any Vedic text for that matter, were definitely written later than 1700 BC. But mathematical data cannot be manipulated just like that, and Seidenberg remained convinced of his case: “Whatever the difficulty there may be [concerning chronology], it is small in comparison with the difficulty of deriving the Vedic ritual application of the theorem from Babylonia. (The reverse derivation is easy)… the application involves geometric algebra, and there is no evidence of geometric algebra from Babylonia. And the geometry of Babylonia is already secondary whereas in India it is primary.” [To satisfy the indologists, he said that the Shulba Sutra had conserved an older tradition, and that it is from this one that the Babylonians had learned their mathematics:] “Hence we do not hesitate to place the Vedic (…) rituals, or more exactly, rituals exactly like them, far back of 1700 BC. (…) elements of geometry found in Egypt and Babylonia stem from a ritual system of the kind described in the Sulvasutras.”"

"There is not, and cannot be, number as such. There are several number worlds as there are several Cultures. We find an Indian, an Arabian, a Classical, a Western type of mathematical thought and, corresponding with each, a type of number — each type fundamentally peculiar and unique, an expression of a specific world feeling, a symbol having a specific validity which is even capable of scientific definition, a principle of ordering the Become which reflects the central essence of one and only one soul, viz., the soul of that particular Culture. Consequently, there are more mathematics than one. ... and so it is understandable that even negative numbers, which to us offer no conceptual difficulty, were impossible in the Classical mathematic, let alone zero as a number, that refined creation of a wonderful abstractive power which, for the Indian soul that conceived it as base for a positional numeration, was nothing more nor less than the key to the meaning of existence. Negative magnitudes have no existence.... But when we are told that probably (it is at best a doubtful venture to meditate upon so alien an expression of Being) the Indians conceived numbers which according to our ideas possessed neither value nor magnitude nor relativity, and which only became positive and negative, great or small units in virtue of position, we have to admit that it is impossible for us exactly to re-experience what spiritually underlies this kind of number. For us, 3 is always something, be it positive or negative; for the Greeks it was unconditionally a positive magnitude, +3; but for the Indian it indicates a possibility without existence, to which the word “something” is not yet applicable, outside both existence and non-existence which are properties to be introduced into it. +3, -3, 1/3, are thus emanating actualities of subordinate rank which reside in the mysterious substance (3) in some way that is entirely hidden from us. It takes a Brahmanic soul to perceive these numbers as self-evident, as ideal emblems of a self-complete world form; to us they are as unintelligible as is the Brahman Nirvana, for which, as lying beyond life and death, sleep and waking, passion, compassion and dispassion and yet somehow actual, words entirely fail us. Only this spirituality could originate the grand conception of nothingness as a true number, zero, and even then this zero is the Indian zero for which existent and non-existent are equally external designations."

"I shall not now speak of the knowledge of the Hindus … of their suitable discoveries in the science of astronomy—discoveries even more ingenious than those of the Greeks and Babylonians, of their rational system of mathematics, or of their method of calculation which no words can praise strongly enough; I mean the system using nine symbols."

"I will omit all discussion of the science of the Hindus, a people not the same as the Syrians, their subtle discoveries in the science of astronomy, discoveries that are more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians; their computing that surpasses description. I wish only to say that this computation is done by means of nine signs. If those who believe because they speak Greek, that they have reaced the limits of science should know these things, they would be convinced that there are also others who know something."

"Like the crests on the heads of peacocks, like the gems on the hoods of the cobras, mathematics is at the top of the Vedanga sastras."

"However, it is not unlikely that the Arabs, who received from the Indians the numeral figures (which the Greeks knew not), did from them also receive the use of them, and many profound speculations concerning them, which neither Latins nor Greeks know, till that now of late we have learned them from thence. From the Indians also they might learn their algebra, rather than from Diophantus."

"[It was composed in mid-fifteenth century and records the exploits of King Kanhardeva of Jalor against Alauddin’s General Ulugh Khan who had attacked Gujarat in 1299 and taken a number of prisoners. In the Sorath (Saurashtra) region] “they made people captive - Brahmanas and children, and women, in fact, people of all (description)… huddled them and tied them by straps of raw hide. The number of prisoners made by them was beyond counting. The prisoners’ quarters (bandikhana) were entrusted to the care of the Turks.” ... “During the day they bore the heat of the scorching sun, without shade or shelter as they were [in the sandy desert region of Rajasthan], and the shivering cold during the night under the open sky. Children, tom away from their mother’s breasts and homes, were crying. Each one of the captives seemed as miserable as the other. Already writhing in agony due to thirst, the pangs of hunger… added to their distress. Some of the captives were sick, some unable to sit up. Some had no shoes to put on and no clothes to wear. …Some had iron shackles on their feet. Separated from each other, they were huddled together and tied with straps of hide. Children were separated from their parents, the wives from their husbands, thrown apart by this cruel raid. Young and old were seen writhing in agony, as loud wailings arose from that part of the camp where they were all huddled up… Weeping and wailing, they were hoping that some miracle might save them even now.”"

"In 1420 Ahmad Shah punished the ‘infidels’ of Satpura; in 1433 he raided Dungarpur and in 1440 he brought about Idar’s submission. All his conquests were accompanied by conversions and boosted Muslim demography. Mahmud Beghara’s (1458-1511) exertions in the field of proselytization were equally impressive. In 1469 he led an army into Sorath against the Mandalik of Girnar. To the Raja’s protests that he had paid the tribute regularly, Mahmud replied that he had come “neither for tribute nor for plunder, but to establish the true faith in Sorath.”"

"Sultan Mahmud relied on the help of Allãh and proceeded there; on the way he laid waste the land of Sorath. From that place the Sultan went towards the temple of those people. Many Rajputs who were known as Parwha , decided to lay down their lives, and started fighting with swords and spears in (defence) of the temple. Sultan Mahmud postponed the conquest of the fort to the next year and returned to Ahmadabad."

"'In AD 1696-97 (AH 1108) orders were issued for the destruction of the major temples at Sorath in Gujarat.'...'He stopped public worship at the Hindu temple of Dwarka.'"

"“In the year 817, eight hundred and seventeen Hijri, he resolved to march with intent of jihad against the unbelievers of Girnar, a famous fort in Sorath. Raja Mandalik fought with him but was defeated and took refuge in the fort. It is narrated that even though that land (region) this time did not get complete brightness form the lamp of Islam, yet the Sultan subdued the fort of Junagadh situated near the foot of Girnar mountain. Most of the Zamindars of Sorath became submissive and obedient to him and agreed to pay tribute. After that, he demolished the temple of Sayyedpur in the month of Jamadi I of the year 818, eight hundred and eighteen Hijri… In the year 823, eight hundred and twenty-three Hijri, he attended to the establishment of administrative control over his dominion. He suppressed refractoriness wherever it was found. He demolished temples and constructed masjids in their places…”364"

"Similarly, Ashraf—who sees Islam as a religion of ‘equality and fraternity’ and that it opened doors to low-caste Hindus for rising higher in society—found, based on mostly Islamic sources, that ‘With his conversion to Islam, the average Muslim did not change his old environment, which was deeply influenced by caste distinction and general social exclusiveness.’"

"They were known by the generic term Turks and they insisted on monopolizing all key posts and important positions, and maintaining their racial and exotic identity. This attitude was also shared by their children and children’s children, who though born in India, psychologically felt that they were Turks of foreign stock. On the other hand the foreign Muslims treated the Indian Muslim converts with contempt. … Conversion to Islam did not change their status, and foreign Muslims looked down upon them. The foreigners especially were not prepared to treat them on equal terms at all. To add insult to injury, the chronicler Ziya Barani, a confirmed believer in the racial superiority of the so-called Turks and baseness of the Indian Muslims, recommends: “Teachers of every kind are to be sternly ordered not to thrust precious stones down the throats of dogs… that is, to the mean, the ignoble, the worthless. To shopkeepers and the low born they are to teach nothing more than the rules about prayer, fasting, religious charity and the Hajj pilgrimage along with some chapters of the Quran and some doctrines of the faith without which their religion cannot be correct and valid prayers are not possible. They are to be instructed in nothing more. They are not to be taught reading and writing for plenty of disorders arise owing to the skill of the low-born in knowledge…” “The low-born, who have been enrolled for practising the baser arts and the meaner professions, are capable only of vices…” Indeed all neo-Muslims were called by the generic but contemptuous term julaha. Surely all the converts could not have come from the weaver caste, but the word julaha became synonymous with the despised low-born Indian Muslim convert. On the other hand the foreign Muslims (or Turks) “alone are capable of virtue, kindness, generosity, valour, good deed, good works, truthfulness, keeping of promises… loyalty, clarity of vision, justice, equity, recognition of rights, gratitude for favours and fear of God. They are, consequently, said to be noble, free born, virtuous, religious, of high pedigree and pure birth. These groups, alone are worthy of offices and posts in the government… Owing to their actions the government of the king is strengthened and adorned.” On the other hand the “low-born” (Indian) Muslims are capable only of vices - immodesty, falsehood, miserliness, misappropriation, wrongfulness, lies, evil-speaking ingratitude,…shamelessness, impundence… So they are called low-born, bazaar people, base, mean, worthless, plebian, shameless and of dirty birth”. …"

"It is material to remark that the Great Mogol is a Mahometan, of the sect of the Sounnys, who, believing with the Turks that Osman was the true successor of Mahomet, are distinguished by the name of Osmanlys... The court itself does not now consist, as originally, of real Mogols; but is a medley of Usbecs, Persians, Arabs, and Turks, or descendants from all these people; known, as I said before, by the general appellation of Mogols. It should be added, however, that children of the third and fourth generation, who have the brown complexion, and the languid manner of this country of their nativity, are held in much less respect than new comers, and are seldom invested with official situations: they consider themselves happy, if permitted to serve as private soldiers in the infantry of cavalry."

"In theory all Muslims are equal; in practice some have always been more equal than the others. Foreign Muslims tried to dominate over Indian Muslims. At the top were the Ulema or the learned, nobles and army commanders. They were all foreigners or descended from migrant Muslims. It was from the Ulema class that the high officers, of government as well as religious institutions were chosen. .... It was through these men that the regime systematized the religious and social life of the Muslim community just as it organized the extension and administration of Muslim dominions in India through the nobility."

"Turks of pure lineage and Tajiks of noble birth could not tolerate … the tribes of Hind to rule over them."

"In the medieval period, heredity and lineage were taken into account in the selection of officers and nobles, and as far as possible low-born Indian Muslims were not appointed to high offices. Foreign Muslims were generally preferred, not only in the Sultanate of Delhi or the Mughal Empire, but also in the independent kingdoms of Gujarat and Malwa and the Adil Shahi and Qutbshahi kingdoms of the Deccan. ... With this background, it needs no reiteration that, by and large, Muslim administration drew neither on India’s native tradition nor on native manpower and the development of Muslim administrative system and its implementation and execution in India owed much to foreign elements. ... The administration of the Sultanate and Mughal Empire was bureaucratic throughout. Over long periods this administrative system was dominated by immigrants from abroad, mainly West Asia and North Africa and this gave it much of the character of foreign and Islamic rule. Commenting on the list of mansabdars in the Ain-i-Akbari, Moreland says that while about 70 percent of the nobles were foreigners belonging to families which had either come to India with Humayun or had arrived at the court after the accession of Akbar, of the remaining 30 percent of the appointments which were held by Indians, rather more than half were Moslems and “rather less than half Hindus.”"

"The population of Indian Muslims grew rapidly through enslavement. This rapid growth gave rise to new problems. One was a tussle for power between foreign slave-Amirs and Indian slaves some of whom also attained to the position of nobles.... [Minhaj Siraj describes:] “The Maliks and servants of the Sultan’s Court were all Turks of pure lineage” (Turkan-i-pak) writes he, and Taziks of noble birth (Tazikan-i-guzida was). “Imad-ud-Din Rayhan (who) was castrated and mutilated, and of the tribe of Hind, was ruling over the heads of lords of high descent, and the whole of them were loathing that state, and were unable to suffer any longer that degradation.”... The language of Ziyauddin Barani is not less vituperative. He was a staunch believer in the racial superiority of the Turks and the baseness of Indian Muslims. He recommended that “Teachers of every kind are to be sternly ordered not to thrust precious stones down the throats of dogs… that is, to the mean, the ignoble, the worthless… To the low-born they are to teach nothing more than the rules about prayer, fasting, religious charity and the Hajj pilgrimage along with some chapters of the Quran and some doctrines of the faith… They (Indian Muslims) are not to be taught reading and writing for plenty of disorders arise owing to the skill of the low-born in knowledge… the low-born are capable only of vices… so they are called low-born, worthless, plebeian, shameless and of dirty birth.” ... The fate and fortune of the black Africans was not that good....the majority of them were treated as lesser Muslims."

"Muslim ‘community’ in India had remained sharply divided into two mutually exclusive segments throughout the centuries of Islamic invasions and rule over large parts of the country. On the one hand, there were the descendants of conquerors who came from outside or who identified themselves completely with the conquerors - the Arabs, the Turks, the Iranians, and the Afghans. They glorified themselves as the Ashrãf (high-born, noble) or Ahli-i-Daulat (ruling race) and Ahl-i-Sa‘adat (custodians of religion). On the other hand, there were converts from among the helpless Hindus who were looked down upon by the Ashrãf and described as the Ajlãf (low-born, ignoble) and Arzãl (mean, despicable) depending upon the Hindu castes from which the converts came. The converts were treated as Ahl-i-Murãd (servile people) who were expected to obey the Ahl-i-Daulat and Ahl-i-Sa‘adat abjectly. Shah Waliullah (1703-62) and his son Abdul Aziz (1746-1822) were the first to notice this situation and felt frightened that the comparatively small class of the Ashrãf was most likely to be drowned in the surrounding sea of Hindu Kafirs. ... They had to turn to the neo-Muslims. The neo-Muslims, however, had little interest in waging wars for Islam. They had, therefore, to be fully Islamized, that is, alienated completely from their ancestral society and culture. That is why the Tabligh movement was started."

"Muhammad Tughlaq always preferred foreign Muslims to Indians for appointment as officers. The rebellion of Ain-ul-mulk Multani (1339) during his reign was a symptom of the resentment felt by the India-born nobles against this policy of prejudice.... Foreign nobles looked down upon Indian Muslim nobles, and considered them as ‘lowborn’, although not all foreign Muslims were of high lineage."

"“Would our aristocracy like that a man of low caste or insignificant origin, though he be a B.A. or M.A., and have the requisite ability, should be in a position of authority above them and have power in making laws that affect their lives and property? Never! Nobody would like it.”"

"It is true that Balban also made detailed enquiries about the families of all his officers. He refused to grant audience to a low-born officer (Amir-i-Bazariyan) for “granting him an interview would reduce the status of the king in the eyes of the common people and diminish the prestige of the throne”."

"In fact, their contempt for the native converts was deeper than that for their Hindu subjects. They had all along looked down upon the native converts as Ajlãf (low-born) and Arzãl (base-born) as compared to the Ashrãf (exalted) which distinctive designation they had reserved for themselves..... It was at this critical juncture that the frustrated fraternity of foreign Muslims took a very strategic step. They started swearing by a solidarity with the native Muslims whom they had despised so far. They let loose on the native Muslims an army of mercenary Mullahs recruited, mostly from their own ranks. These Mullahs went about broadcasting the message that ‘Islam was in danger’, and that ‘Hindus were out to enslave and exploit the Muslim minority’. It was in this manner that the residues of Islamic imperialism managed to ‘merge’ themselves with the native converts, and to present themselves at the head of a strong phalanx pitted against whatever historical forces threatened their unjust privileges. Hitherto, the haughty Ashrãf had stood strictly aloof from the abject Ajlãf and the despised Arzãl. Now all of a sudden the latter became the former’s ‘brothers in faith’. This was a tremendous transformation of the political scene in the second decade of the 20th century."

"The principle of ranking finds a vigorous application. Those who claim foreign ancestry are the aristocracy, the Ashraf. They have their own ranking: Sayyids, Sheikhs, Moghuls and Pathans. They are divided into subsidiary categories, generally all endogamous. The local converts constitute the plebeian class and are frankly called Ajlaf and Arzal, Arabic words which mean the wretched, the ignoble, the mean, the triflings. … They are further divided literally into hundreds of castes, most of them strictly endogamous."

"The Muslim shares to a very high degree sensitivity about rank which is so characteristic of the Middle Ages. Not only is he rank conscious, but he is keenly concerned with expressing social distinctions .... Questions of precedence are of considerable importance. Mankind was divided into four orders.... 1. King, 2. Wazir, 3. Aristrocracy of Wealth, 4. The middle class... The rest of the population counted for nothing."

"The Ashraf caste are the highest and claim to be descendants of Prophet Muhammad, or other Arab chiefs, or Turks, or Persians. The Ajlaf are people of Indian origin who got converted by Islamic invasions; the Arzal are the lowest castes among Muslims. The Urdu word, quam , refers to caste and is commonly mentioned in matrimonial advertisements in Pakistan. In theory, caste is ostensibly banned in Islam, and so the politically correct interpretation of quam is ethnicity or community with common heritage. There are communities that identify themselves as Dalit Muslims."

"Evidence that Indian Muslims have strong caste prejudices among them is compelling. Early Muslim historians of medieval India like Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani and Ziauddin Barani (thirteenth-fourteenth century ce) denigrated the Indian converts to Islam. Barani advocated that the sultans should employ only those persons in government service that had aristocratic backgrounds by birth. He advised that children of low caste Hindu converts to Islam should not be admitted into madrassas because this education would qualify them for government jobs. Sultan Ghiyasuddin Balban (r. 1266-87 ce) made noble birth a prerequisite for state service and rejected candidates for official positions if they were low caste converts to Islam. It is also notable that when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan founded the Aligarh Muslim University in 1875, it banned admission to low caste Muslims."

"An overwhelming majority (seventy-five percent) of the present Indian Muslim population is called Dalit Muslims. Caste and untouchability are a lived reality for Muslims in South Asia, and untouchability is the community’s worst-kept secret. Many studies have claimed that concepts of ‘purity and impurity’; ‘clean and unclean castes’ definitely exist among Muslim groups. A 2009 study found there was not one ‘Dalit Muslim’ leader in any of the prominent Muslim organizations, which were dominated essentially by upper caste Muslims. In another 2015 study of seven thousand Dalit Muslim households across fourteen districts in Uttar Pradesh, many testified that they are seated separately at Muslim feasts. Respondents also confirmed that they eat only after the upper caste Muslims. Many said they are served food on separate plates. Around eight percent reported that their children are seated in separate rows in classes and also during school lunches. Similarly, at least a third of them stated that they are not allowed to bury their dead in an upper caste Muslim burial ground. They are told to go elsewhere or provided a corner of the main ground."

"These are the phenomena that account for the enormous increase in the number of those whom we today know of as Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Hardly any Muslim chronicler and historian of the period asserts that the ‘lower castes’ were embracing Islam because some high caste was oppressing them. On the contrary several of them record how different castes lived together, and peaceably. One after the other among them pours special venom on the ‘lower castes’ for being the most determined resisters to the spread of Islam. All this is evident from the memoirs of the emperors themselves, from the accounts of Islamic historians themselves. Yet, our judges repeat the cliches. Nor is it the case that Islam enabled those who converted to enter some egalitarian Utopia. Quite the contrary. And we do not have to look farther than the judgments themselves. What is the ‘reason’ these very judgments give for extending reservations to Muslims, for instance? What is the reason they give for overturning so central a theme of the Constitution and its maker – that such concessions shall not be given along communal fault lines? The ‘reason’ the judges give is that castes continue among Muslims to this day. Is this also because of Hinduism? Or because, as K.S. Lal shows, Islamic rule never aimed to, nor did it in fact, catapult people into some egalitarian Utopia?"

"Mr. Beverley’s opinion, that even a low-caste Hindu, on his conversion to Islam, attains to a position of equality with the generality of Musalmans, simply betrays his ignorance of the customs of the Musalmans. From a religious point of view, of course, all Musalmans stand on a footing of equality. But according to usage and customs the social position and the family rank of a man do not become altered by the change of religion. .In fact the social position of a Musalman convert exactly corresponds to the station he held previous to his conversion, and he can associate with only such Musalmans as belong to the same station as he himself ; a low-caste person on his embracing Islam, is not allowed to hold familiar intercourse or claim equality with high-born Musalmans, nor can a Hindu of superior caste, upon his conversion to Islam, marry into a respectable Musalman family. Rigid and scrupulous regard has ever been paid by the Musalmans to social position and family dignity."

"Wise witnessed in Bengal that some Bediya outcastes of the Hindu society had converted some thirty years ago (c. 1850) and become practising Muslims, ‘but they cannot enter the public mosque or find a place in the public graveyard. From a social point of view they are still aliens with whom no gentleman will associate or eat. The treatment of the Chandal by the Sudra is in no respect more rigorous or harsh than that of the Bediyas by the upper ranks of Muhammadans.’"

"Uncompromising opposition to Gandhi and his cherished Hindu convictions meant that communists were cut off in a considerable measure from the mainstream of the patriotic struggle."

"The world revolution will pass through Shanghai and Calcutta."

"During the great national upsurge of 1942, the Communists acted as stooges and spies of the British Government… Mr. Joshi (of the Communist Party) was placing at the disposal of India the services of his Party Members… Joshi had, as General Secretary of the Party, written a letter in which he offered ‘unconditional help’ to the then Government of India and the Army GHQ to fight the 1942 underground workers and the Azad Hind Fauz (INA) of Subhas Chandra Bose… Joshi’s letter revealed that the CPI was receiving financial aid from the British Government, had a secret pact with the Muslim League…"

"Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. The question, therefore, is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton.” England had to fulfill a double mission in India: One destructive, and the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia. Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moguls, who had successively overrun India, soon became Hinduised, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, themselves conquered by the superior civilization of their subjects. [According to him the British were the first conquerors who were superior, and therefore inaccessible to Hindu civilization. They destroyed it by breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by levelling all that was great and elevated in the native society. The historic pages of their rule in India, report hardly anything beyond that destruction.] “The work of regeneration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins. Nevertheless, it has begun."

"We have up to now devoted too little attention to agitation in Asia. However, the international situation is evidently shaping in such a way that the road to Paris and London lies via the towns of Afghanistan, the Punjab and Bengal. Our military successes in the Urals and in Siberia should raise the prestige of the Soviet Revolution throughout the whole of oppressed Asia to an exceptionally high level. It is essential to exploit this factor and concentrate a military thrust against India to aid the Indian revolution ... the European revolution appears to have withdrawn into the background we ourselves have withdrawn from the West to the East."

"The communists ... reject 'Congress dictatorship' but would welcome a strong state which would crush the communalists, esp the Hindu ones."

"[Marx thought that Hinduism] “was the ideology of an oppressive and outworn society”; he “shared the distaste of most Europeans for its more lurid features. (…) he was as sceptical as his Hindu followers were to be of any notion of a Hindu ‘golden age’ of the past.”"

"[When asked in 1963 that "now that there is Communist government in Kerala, what would happen if communists came to power at the Centre?"] - Communists, communists! Why are you all so obsessed with communism and communists? What is that the communists can do what we cannot do and have not done?... Why do you imagine the communists will ever be voted to power at the Centre? The danger to India, mark you, is not Communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism."

"I turned inevitably with goodwill towards communism, for, whatever its faults, it was at least not hypocritical and not imperialistic. It was not a doctrinal adherence, as I did not know much about the fine points of Communism, my acquaintance being limited at the time to its broad features. There attracted me, as also the tremendous changes taking place in Russia. But Communists often irritated me by their dictatorial ways, their aggressive and rather vulgar methods, their habit of denouncing everybody who did not agree with them. This reaction was no doubt due, as they would say, to my own bourgeois education and up-bringing."

"The contrast with the Communists is striking. The Communists stood exposed as traitors in 1942-47, when they informed the British government (a Soviet ally) about Quit India activists and served as a mercenary intellectual vanguard for the Muslim League by propagating economic and other secular-sounding arguments for Partition; once more in 1948-50, when they supported the separatist Razâkâr militia in Hyderabad and subsequently started an armed uprising of their own; and yet again in the run-up to the Chinese invasion of 1962, when they clamoured that “China’s chairman is also India’s chairman” and accused India of having started the war with China. But they were always back on top within a short time, fully respected members of the democratic political spectrum. Better still, they managed even to make other parties implement much of the Communist agenda, from the nationalization of the banks to an unnecessary degree of hostility to the West, upheld by Congress and Janata governments alike. Such are the results when you make it your priority to control the ideological air space, rather than the ground level of work among the masses."

"In this context, one should know that there is a strange alliance between the Indian Communist parties and the Muslim fanatics. In the forties the Communists gave intellectual muscle and political support to the Muslim League's plan to partition India and create an Islamic state. After independence, they successfully combined (with the tacit support of Prime minister Nehru) to sabotage the implementation of the constitutional provision that Hindi be adopted as national language, and to force India into the Soviet-Arab front against Israel. Ever since, this collaboration has continued to their mutual advantage as exemplified by their common front to defend the Babri Masjid, that symbol of Islamic fanaticism. Under Nehru's rule these Marxists acquired control of most of the educational and research institutes and policies."

"Ever since, they have supported every antinational cause: the crushing of the Quit India movement (1942), Partition (1947), the Razakar terror campaign to prevent the merger of Hyderabad with India (1948), the Chinese claims to Indian territory (up to 1962: “China’s chairman is also India’s chairman”). As late as 1997, Communist leader Sitaram Yechury refused to admit that China had been the aggressor in 1962. In the 1990s, they have threatened secession of the states they control in the event of a Hindu-nationalist election victory. It is a different matter that by the time this victory took place, in 1998, the Communist movement had become too weak and grey to hazard such action.... This kind of wild allegation has to do with the Communists’ bad conscience about their collaboration with the British against the freedom movement in 1941-45."

"For those unfamiliar with modern Indian history: the Marxists, already pushy for acquiring as much power in the institutions as they could grab, were handed a near-monopoly on institutional power in India's academic and educational sector by Indira Gandhi ca. 1970. Involved in an intra-Congress power struggle, she needed the help of the Left. Her confidants P.N. Haksar and Nurul Hasan packed the institutions with Marxists, card-carrying or otherwise. When, during the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77), her Communist Party allies threatened to become too powerful, she and her son Sanjay removed them from key political positions but, in a typical instance of politicians' short-sightedness, they left the Marxists? hold on the cultural sector intact. In the good old Soviet tradition, they at once set out to falsify history and propagate their own version through the official textbooks. After coming to power in 1998, the BJP-dominated government has made a half-hearted and not always very competent attempt to effect glasnost (openness, transparency) at least in the history textbooks. This led the Marxists to start a furious hate campaign against the so-called 'saffronization' of history."

"Indian Marxists have the power but lack the numbers, so they have cultivated alliances with all actual or potential enemies of Hinduism."

"Since some ignorant dupes of these Marxists denounce as “McCarthyist” anyone who points out their ideological inspiration, it deserves to be emphasized that “eminent historians” like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and Irfan Habib are certified as Marxists in standard Marxist sources like Tom Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought . During the official historians' Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute in 1991, the pro-mosque team's argumentation and several other anti-temple pamphlets were published by the People's Publishing House, a Communist Party outfit. One of the recent textbook innovations most furiously denounced as “saffronization” was the truism that Lenin's armed seizing of power in October/November 1917 was a “coup d'état”. And in early 2003, while they were unchaining all their devils against glasnost , the Marxists ruling West Bengal deleted from a textbook a passage in which Mahatma Gandhi's biographer Louis Fischer called Stalin “at least as ruthless as Hitler”. Such are the true concerns of the “secularists” warning the world against the attempts at glasnost in India's national history curriculum."

"To dissuade them from anarchic terrorism against British individuals, the authorities gave them Marxist literature in prison, because orthodox Marxism believes in mass violence once the revolution arrives, but not in stray acts of violence. The British would take care that the great revolution never came, and meanwhile the terrorists-turned-Marxists would remain physically harmless. That is how Bengal as the hotbed of revolutionary nationalism became the centre of Indian Marxism."

"Nehru’s daughter, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, carried her father’s game much farther. In her fight for a monopoly of power, she split the Congress Party, and made a common cause with the Communists. Well-known Communists and fellow-travellers were given positions of power in the ruling Congress Party, in the Government at the Centre as well in the States, and in prestigious institutions all over the country. The Muslim-Marxist combine of “historians” had already captured the Indian History Congress during the days of Pandit Nehru, and many honest historians had been hounded out of it. Now this combine was placed in control of the Indian Council of Historical Research and entrusted with extensive patronage. The combine took over the National Council of Educational Research and Training also, and laid down the guidelines for producing school textbooks on various subjects. The Jawaharlal Nehru University was created and financed on a fabulous scale in order to collect Communist professors from all over the country, and form them into a frontline brigade for launching all sorts of anti-Hindu campaigns. The smokescreen for this Stalinist operation was provided by the slogan of Secularism which nobody was supposed to question, or examine as to what it had come to mean. Its meaning had to be accepted ex-cathedra, and as laid down by the Muslim-Marxist combine. In the new political parlance that emerged, Hinduism and the nationalism it inspired, became blackned as “Communalism”. Small wonder that the word “Hindu” started becoming a dirty word in the academia as well as the media."

"During the 1920's and 1930's young radicals like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose and Jayaprakesh Narayan were straining at the leash: they fretted at the patient and peaceful methods of the Mahatma. The Indian communists dubbed him a charismatic but calculating leader who knew how to rouse the masses but deliberately contained and diverted their revolutionary ardour so as not to hurt the interests of British imperialists and Indian capitalists."

"[This ideology was] “more Eurocentric than regular imperialism. It used radical slogans but its aims were reactionary. (…) Marx fully shared the contempt of the British imperialists for India. He fully subscribed to the theses of colonial scholarship that India was not a nation, had no history and was meant for subjugation. Marxism was Macaulayism at its most hostile. It blackened Indian history systematically. It gave to [the] Indian social and political system its own format, the one it had learnt from its European teachers. It saw in Hinduism not (…) a great spiritual civilization but only communalism.”"

"The US State Department's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism has found that going by the number of terror attacks and the number of killings of innocent citizens every year from 2012 until now, the big-five terror group consists of the IS, Taliban, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, and the Communist Party of India (Maoist)."

"Indian philosophy, Mao tells Kissinger, is ‘just a bunch of empty words’. ‘India did not win independence,’ Mao tells Kissinger, ‘If it does not attach itself to Britain, it attaches itself to the Soviet Union. And more than one half of their economy depends on you...’ In his important study, Garver reproduces a poem of Mao in which India is represented as a helpless cow with a bear—the Soviet Union—astride it. Garver cites the ‘Maoist exposition’ of the poem which explains the reference to India as follows: ‘Chairman Mao’s use of the cow as a metaphor for India could not be more appropriate. It is no better than a cow... it is only food or for people to ride and for pulling carts; it has no particular talents. The cow would starve to death if its master did not give it grass to eat... Even though this cow may have great ambitions, they are futile.’"

"Readers would be surprised to know that we also got books on socialism at government cost. The government thought that they would be able to divert the minds of political prisoners by making them interested in socialist ideas, which they thought were a lesser evil than ‘terrorist’ actions such as the murder of oppressive British officials. Thus, the government had some hand in making political prisoners in the Andamans interested in socialism. They had unknowingly sowed the seeds of communism among political prisoners detained in other jails as well."

"The Third World country on which the KGB eventually concentrated most operational effort during the Cold War was India... After the elections of February 1967, the KGB claimed, doubtless optimistically, that it was able to influence 30 to 40 per cent of the new parliament."

"Oleg Kalugin, who became head of FCD Directorate K (Counter-intelligence) in 1973, remembers India as ‘a model of KGB infiltration of a Third World government’: ‘We had scores of sources throughout the Indian government – in intelligence, counter-intelligence, the Defence and Foreign Ministries, and the police.’ In 1978 Directorate K, whose responsibilities included the penetration of foreign intelligence and security agencies, was running, through Line KR in the Indian residencies, over thirty agents – ten of whom were Indian intelligence officers. Kalugin recalls one occasion on which Andropov personally turned down an offer from an Indian minister to provide information in return for $50,000 on the grounds that the KGB was already well supplied with material from the Indian Foreign and Defence Ministries: ‘It seemed like the entire country was for sale; the KGB – and the CIA – had deeply penetrated the Indian government. After a while neither side entrusted sensitive information to the Indians, realizing their enemy would know all about it the next day.’"

"India under Indira Gandhi was also probably the arena for more KGB active measures than anywhere else in the world, though their significance appears to have been considerably exaggerated by the Centre, which overestimated its ability to manipulate Indian opinion."

"In the early 1970s, the KGB presence in India became one of the largest in the world outside the Soviet bloc. Indira Gandhi placed no limit on the number of Soviet diplomats and trade officials, thus allowing the KGB and GRU as many cover positions as they wished. Nor, like many other states, did India object to admitting Soviet intelligence officers who had been expelled by less hospitable regimes. The expansion of KGB operations in the Indian subcontinent (and first and foremost in India) during the early 1970s led the FCD to create a new department. Hitherto operations in India, as in the rest of non-Communist South and South-East Asia, had been the responsibility of the Seventh Department. In 1974 the newly founded Seventeenth Department was given charge of the Indian subcontinent."

"The greatest successes of Soviet active measures in India remained the exploitation of the susceptibility of Indira Gandhi and her advisers to bogus CIA conspiracies against them."

"Particularly the Delhi Sultanate was hardly a functioning empire... In the Mewat region south of Delhi, the Shudras led the unrelenting resistance against the Sultans, waging a guerilla operation from hide-outs in the forest. Sultans Nasiruddin and Balban had to clear away the forest before they could hunt down and forcibly convert a substantial part of this population...."

"In 1256 Ulugh Khan Balban carried on devastating warfare in Sirmur, and ‘so many of the rebellious Hindus were killed that numbers cannot be computed or described.’ Ranthambhor was attacked in 1259 and ‘many of its valiant fighting men were sent to hell.’ In the punitive expedition to Mewat (1260) ‘numberless Hindus perished under the merciless swords of the soldiers of Islam.’ In the same year 12,000 men, women and children were put to the sword in Hariyana."

"It was at this place that he [Ilyas] first came into contact with the Mewatis… These uncouth and illiterate people had converted to Islam on a mass scale as a result of the efforts of the well-known sufi Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia and his descendants, But in practical life they were far from Islam… They kept their Hindu names,… they celebrated all the Hindu festivals and made sacrifices to the pre-Islamic gods and goddesses… In 1921 new problems arose when Arya Samaj preachers resolved to reconvert the Indian Muslim to their ancestral religion. Thanks to the religious and cultural poverty of the Meos, the large-scale activities of the Aryan missionaries met with great success. The solution of this problem was to impart to them religious education so that they did not yield to any malign influence… The only solution to this problem, as the Maulana saw it, lay in separating them from their milieu… They changed their way of dressing and grew beards, shaking off one by one almost all their pre-Islamic customs that they had retained after their conversion…"

"A dislike for Hinduised garments was created and people began to dress themselves according to the specifications of the Shariat. Bracelets got removed from the arms and rings from the ears of men…"

"Another tablighi, Muhammad Abdul Shakur, was more vituperative against the prevalence of Hindu customs among the Muslims. He raved against the barbarous (wahshiana) dress of the Hindus like dhoti, ghaghra and angia and advocated wearing of “kurta, amama, kurti, pyjama and orhni (or long Chadar)”. He attacked Hindu marriage customs practised by Muslims and warned women against participating in marriages with their faces uncovered. He insisted on women observing parda and was shocked to find that even after a thousand years of their conversion during the expeditions of Mahmud of Ghazni, Indian Muslims were living like Hindus. In the end he exhorted the senior Mewati Muslims thus: “Oh Muslims, the older people of Mewat, I appeal to you in a friendly way, doing my tablighi duty, to give up all idolatrous and illegal (mushrikana) ways of the Hindus… Islam has laid down rules for all social and cultural conduct… follow them.”"

"Ulugh Khan Balban marched with a large force on a campaign in the region of Ranthambhor, Mewat and Siwalik. He made a proclamation that a soldier who brought a live captive would be rewarded with two silver tankahs and one who brought the head of a dead one would get one silver tankah. Soon three to four hundred living and dead were brought to his presence."

"Temples were desecrated, palaces and 'havelis' denuded of their wealth and works of art, vandalised. hardly anything survived the holocaust in the fort, except the undying spirit of Mewar that left an indelible message behind-'I will be back'. Padmini perished in the flames of jahuar, but left a legacy that still lingers in our consciousness. In fact, it is the likes of her who have enabled us to survive the slavery of a thousand years with almost every thing intact - our 'Vedas' and values, our festivals and fairs, our 'Ragas' and rituals, our arts and culture and above all, our pride in the past."

"In June 1576 Maharana Pratap of Chittor had to face Akbar’s armies in the famous battle of Haldighati. Rana Pratap fought with exemplary courage and of his soldiers only a little more than half could leave the field alive. In the darkness of the evening, the wounded Rana left the field on his favourite horse Chetak. A little later, in October, Akbar himself marched in person in pursuit of the Rana, but the latter remained untraced and unsubdued. Later on he recovered all Mewar except Mandalgarh and Chittor. His nearest associates, the Bhil and Lohia tribals, had taken a vow that until their motherland was not freed, they would not eat in metal plates, but only on leaves; they would not sleep on bedsteads, but only on the ground; and they would renounce all comforts. The bravest among them even left Chittor, to return to it only when Mewar had regained independence. That day was not destined to come in their life-time. It was not to come for decades, for generations, for centuries."

"“In Rajab AH 836 (AD February-March, 1433) Sultãn Ahmad mounted an expedition for the conquest of MewãR and Nãgaur. When he reached the town of Nãgaur, he sent out armies for the destruction of towns and villages and levelled with the ground whatever temple was found at whichever place… Having laid waste the land of Kîlwãrã, the Sultãn entered the land of Dîlwãrã, and he ruined the lofty palaces of RãNã Mokal and destroyed the temples and idols…”"

"Balban, when he was Ulugh Khan Khan-i-Azam, once brought to Delhi (in about 1260) two hundred fifty 'Hindu leading men and men of position” from Mewar and Siwalik, bound and shackled and chained. During the expedition he had proclaimed that a royal soldier would be rewarded with two silver tankahs if he captured a person alive and one tankah if he brought the head of a dead one. They brought to his presence 300 to 400 living and dead everyday. The reigning Sultan Nasiruddin ordered the death of the leading men. The others accompanying them were shaken to the bones and completely tamed."

"2 August 1680: ‘Temple of Someshwar in western Mewar ordered to be destroyed.’"

"All this reads like a fairy tale, but it is history. And the history of Mewar has a moral to teach : the spirit of man is unbending, unconquerable."

"The Rajput War of 1679-80 was accompanied by the destruction of 175 temples in Mewar alone, including the famous one of Someshwar and three grand ones at Udaipur."

"Firoz Tughlak, foiled in his attempt to seize' Khargu, who fled to Kumaun, appointed an Afghan governor at Sambhal with orders to invade the country of Katehar every year, to commit every kind of ravage and devastation, and not to allow it to be inhabited until tire murderer was given up."

"Muslim power in India suffered a serious setback after Iltutmish. Balban had to battle against a revival of Hindu power. The Katehar Rajputs of what came to be known as Rohilkhand in later history, had so far refused to submit to Islamic imperialism. Balban led an expedition across the Ganges in 1254 AD. According to Badauni, “In two days after leaving Delhi, he arrived in the midst of the territory of Katihar and put to death every male, even those of eight years of age, and bound the women.” But in spite of such wanton cruelty, Muslim power continued to decline till the Khaljis revived it after 1290 AD."

"When Balban became the sultan "large sections of the male population were massacred in Katehar and, according to Barani, in villages and jungles heaps of human corpses were left rotting"."

"Although Jalaluddin Khalji was an old and vacillating king, even he did not just remain content with expressing rage at the fact of not being able to deal with the Hindus according to the law. During six years of his reign (June 1290 -July 1296), he mounted expeditions and captured prisoners. While suppressing the revolt of Malik Chhajju, a scion of the dynasty he had ousted, he marched towards Bhojpur in Farrukhabad district and ruthlessly attacked Hindus in the region of Katehar (later Rohilkhand)."

"As a classical tricolour scheme, the Indian flag, unlike the BJP flag, may be read as just another instance of the traditional Indo‑European scheme of three qualities (triguna) found in most tricolour flags: white as representing the serene (sattvika) quality, saffron or red for the energetic (râjasika) quality, and a dark colour for the material (tâmasika) quality. The dark colour can vary between different Indo‑European cultures, and may be black, brown, blue or even green; in which case, green has a natural non‑communal symbol value in a Vedic cosmological scheme... In a future post‑communal era, the said triguna symbolism may become the official explanation of the Republic flag's colour division, but its historical genesis was of course communal: during the Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai era of Congress collaboration with the (intrinsically anti-national) Khilafat agitation, Muslim militants and their Hindu sympathizers inside the Congress insisted on including green, conventionally the emblematic colour of the desert religion, Islam. The Congress Flag Committee (1931) proposed the plain saffron flag (with blue charkha) as a historically rooted, truly national flag for independent India."

"The tricolour flag was initially rejected as communal, with the Sikhs being dissatisfied that they were not represented on it with a colour of their own, while solid saffron with a blue Charkha (spinning wheel, later replaced with the chakra, the wheel representing the pan-Indian reign of the chakravarti or ‘wheel-turner’) was welcomed as non-communal... Another story could be told about the choice of the Congress tricolour flag as national flag in preference to the saffron flag. the Congress had first opted for the saffron flag, which had been waved by earlier freedom fighters including Shivaji, but it quickly backtracked, fearing that Muslims would object. So before they could even express any objection, they were given a new flag of which they could call one third their own, viz. the green strip, as broad as the saffron strip symbolizing Hinduism."

"China has one big and four small stars in its flag to signify that its major nation and a number of minor nations are united in a single state. India has the 24-spoked wheel of the chakravarti or universal ruler in its flag, meaning that within his empire, every tribute-paying vassal state had its own autonomy and traditions. In modern and more egalitarian terms: the Indian federation unites many communities into a single civilization-state."

"When the freedom movement started thinking in terms of a future independent state, then conceived according to the prevailing model of the nation-state, it became aware of the need for national symbols. For the flag, quite sensibly, it toyed with the idea of reusing Shivaji’s saffron flag, as uniformly orange as Moammar al-Qadhafi’s Libyan flag was uniformly green. But a movement courting Muslims for support preferred to keep this crystal-clear symbol at a distance. But the Congress chose the tricolour, a communal flag of a composite culture with orange on top standing for Hinduism and green at the bottom for Islam, an embodiment of Swami Vivekananda’s success formula: ‘Vedantic brain and Islamic body.’ Like with the green colour in more recent political flags, Hindus need not stick to the communal interpretation of the Muslims and Nehruvians: Long before Islam existed, green was already around and had a natural meaning: opulence, prosperity, as well as nature. Likewise, orange forever remains the colour of fire, of tapas (‘heat’, asceticism), of spirituality. The middle strip is white, a colour that plays a role in both (actually, in all) religions and suggests purity. Mahatma Gandhi tried to adorn it with his pet spinning wheel, but the Nehruvian alternative won through: ‘Ashoka’s wheel’, in blue. Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘India’s last viceroy’, was a champion of both the Moghul and the British colonial cultures and quite ignorant of the native culture, so he did not know that the twenty-four-spoked wheel long predated Ashoka. It was the symbol of the Chakravarti, or the ‘wheel turner’, the axis in the wheel of the samrajya, ‘unified rule’, ‘empire’, a principle already sung in the epics. Making India into a Chakravarti-kshetra was an old ideal, and Ashoka admittedly came close to realizing it: He was almost a ‘pan-Indian’ ruler. However, he did not originate this notion. The spoked wheel embodies the relation between a single centre and numerous (‘twenty-four’) secondary centres on the periphery, i.e., the central authority spreading its umbrella over the several states with their swadharma (ca. ‘own mores’) and swatantra (‘autonomy’). As such, it is a fine symbol of India’s federalism, for ‘unity in diversity’."

"The Flag links up the past and the present. It is the legacy bequeathed to us by the architects of our liberty. Those who fought under this Flag are mainly responsible for the arrival of this great day of Independence for India. Pandit Jawaharlal has pointed out to you that it is not a day of joy unmixed with sorrow. The Congress fought for unity and liberty. The unity has been compromised; liberty too. I feel, has been compromised, unless we are able to face the tasks which now confront us with courage, strength and vision. What is essential to-day is to equip ourselves with new strength and with new character if these difficulties are to be overcome and if the country is to achieve the great ideal of unity and liberty which it fought for. Times are hard. Everywhere we are consumed by phantasies. Our minds are haunted by myths. The world is full of misunderstandings, suspicions and distrusts. In these difficult days it depends on us under what banner we fight. Here we are Putting in the very centre the white, the white of the Sun's rays. The white means the path of light. There is darkness even at noon as some People have urged, but it is necessary for us to dissipate these clouds of darkness and control our conduct-by the ideal light, the light of truth, of transparent simplicity which is illustrated by the colour of white. We cannot attain purity, we cannot gain our goal of truth, unless we walk in the path of virtue. The Asoka's wheel represents to us the wheel of the Law, the wheel Dharma. Truth can be gained only by the pursuit of the path of Dharma, by the practice of virtue. Truth,—Satya, Dharma —Virtue, these ought to be the controlling principles of all those who work under this Flag. It also tells us that the Dharma is something which is perpetually moving. If this country has suffered in the recent past, it is due to our resistance to change. There are ever so many challenges hurled at us and if we have not got the courage and the strength to move along with the times, we will be left behind. There are ever so many institutions which are worked into our social fabric like caste and untouchability. Unless these things are scrapped we cannot say that we either seek truth or practise virtue. This wheel which is a rotating thing, which is a perpetually revolving thing, indicates to us that there is death in stagnation. There is life in movement. Our Dharma is Sanatana, eternal, not in the sense that it is a fixed deposit but in the sense that it is perpetually changing. Its uninterrupted continuity is its Sanatana character. So even with regard to our social conditions it is essential for us to move forward. The red, the orange, the Bhagwa colour, represents the spirit of renunciation. All forms of renunciation are to be embodied in Raja Dharma. Philosophers must be kings. Our leaders must be disinterested. They must be dedicated spirits. They must be people who are imbued with the spirit of renunciation which that saffron, colour has transmitted to us from the beginning of our history. That stands for the fact that the World belongs not to the wealthy, not to the prosperous but to the meek and the humble, the dedicated and the detached. That spirit of detachment that spirit of renunciation is represented by the orange or the saffron colour and Mahatma Gandhi has embodied it for us in his life and the Congress has worked under his guidance and with his message. If we are not imbued with that spirit of renunciation in than difficult days, we will again go under. The green is there, our relation to the soil, our relation to the plant life here, on which all other life depends. We must build our Paradise, here on this green earth. If we are to succeed in this enterprise, we must be guided by truth (white), practise virtue (wheel), adopt the method of self-control and renunciation (saffron). This flag tells us "Be ever alert, be ever on the move, go forward, work for a free, flexible, compassionate, decent, democratic society in which Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists will all find a safe shelter." Let us all unite under this banner and rededicate ourselves to the ideas our flag symbolizes."

"Remember, under this Flag National Flag of India, there is no prince and there is no peasant, there is no rich no poor. There is no privilege; there is only duty and responsibility and sacrifice. Whether we be Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs or Zoroastrians and others, our Mother India has one undivided heart and on indivisible spirit. Men and women of reborn India, rise and salute this Flag!"

"Three things are noticeable about this political aggression of the Muslims.... First is the ever-growing catalogue of the Muslim's political demands. Their origin goes back to the year 1892....Accordingly the British Parliament passed in 1892 what is called the Indian Councils Act. ... It was in the legislatures that were constituted under this Act that the principle of separate representation for Musalmans was for the first time introduced in the political constitution of India. The introduction of this principle is shrouded in mystery. It is a mystery because it was introduced so silently and so stealthily."

"It is a mystery as to who was responsible for its introduction. This scheme of separate representation was not the result of any demand put forth by any organized Muslim association. In whom did it then originate? It is suggested that it originated with the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, who, as far back as the year 1888, when dealing with the question of representation in the Legislative Councils, emphasized the necessity that in India representation will have to be, not in the way representation is secured in England, but representation by interests. Curiosity leads to a further question, namely, what could have led Lord Dufferin to propose such a plan? It is suggested that the idea was to wean away the Musalmans from the Congress, which had already been started three years before. Be that as it may, it is certain that it is by this Act that separate representation for Muslims became, for the first time, a feature of the Indian Constitution. ..."

"Though, to start with, the suggestion of separate representation came from the British, the Muslims did not fail to appreciate the social value of separate political rights; with the result that when in 1909 the Muslims came to know that the next step in the reform of the Legislative Councils was contemplated, they waited of their own accord in deputation upon the Viceroy, Lord Minto, and placed before him the following demands :— ... (iv) The number of Muhammadan representatives in the Imperial Legislative Council should not depend on their numerical strength, and Muhammadans should never be in an ineffective minority."

"With this new list, there is no knowing where the Muslims are going to stop in their demands. Within one year, that is, between 1938 and 1939, one more demand and that too of a substantial character, namely 50 percent share in everything, has been added to it. In this catalogue of new demands there are some which on the face of them are extravagant and impossible, if not irresponsible. As an instance, one may refer to the demand for fifty-fifty and the demand for the recognition of Urdu as the national language of India. In 1929, the Muslims insisted that in allotting seats in Legislatures, a majority shall not be reduced to a minority or equality. This principle, enunciated by themselves, it is now demanded, shall be abandoned and a majority shall be reduced to equality. The Muslims in 1929 admitted that the other minorities required protection and that they must have it in the same manner as the Muslims. The only distinction made between the Muslims and other minorities was as to the extent of the protection. The Muslims claimed a higher degree of protection than was conceded to the other minorities, on the ground of their political importance. The necessity and adequacy of protection for the other minorities the Muslims never denied. But with this new demand of 50 percent the Muslims are not only seeking to reduce the Hindu majority to a minority, but they are also cutting into the political rights of the other minorities. The Muslims are now speaking the language of Hitler and claiming a place in the sun as Hitler has been doing for Germany. For their demand for 50 percent is nothing but a counterpart of the German claims for Deutschland Uber Alles and Lebensraum for themselves, irrespective of what happens to other minorities."

"A few years ago, a Muslim spokesman [Imam Abdullah Bukhari of Jama Masjid, Delhi] had demanded that 20 percent seats in the Parliament and the State Assemblies should be reserved for members of his community. He also recommended that the remaining 80 percent seats should be filled only by those persons whose selection before elections had been cleared by the same community!"

"A very good illustration is the next and very important demand of the Muslim communalists : a larger than proportionate reservation for Muslims in the army and the police. With every clash between Muslims and the PAC, we see secularists plead for the disbanding of the PAC, and the granting of reservations of the Muslims (the minorities, as they say), either in the existing forces or in a new anti-riot force, amounting to some 25% or even 30%. In other words, we see those who started the carnage in Bhagalpur '89, in Gonda '90, in Aligarh '90, in Hyderabad '90, being rewarded with secularist support for their demands, and more support with every riot. [...] In a rabidly communalist article in the secularist paper Mainstream (5/1/1991), N.A. Ansari demands : The Muslims must be provided at least 30% jobs in government, semi-government sectors including the military, the police, the administration and the judiciary."

"The last offers made to Jinnah to make him abandon his Partition plans included 50% reservations for Muslims at all levels and an effective predominance of the Muslims in the government."

"The Rajinder Sachar Committee (under PM Manmohan Singh) ruled that Muslims are entitled to huge privileges given their “minority” status, as if the Hindus have to compensate them for anything... I am not in favour of historical entitlement,... but if at all any compensation is to be paid, it is not the Hindu community that has a debt to service... From the secularists, the omnipresent “minorities” propaganda is to be expected, they will use any and every discourse that can put Hindus on the defensive. Not so expected is that many in and around the BJP have swallowed the notion of “minorities” hook, line and sinker, including even their entitlement to privileges. (Ch 32)"

"It is certainly not an unfair reading of Gandhi’s mind to state that he offered ‘hope that separatism would eventually disappear.’ This separatism had become an official part of India’s political landscape with the creation of the Muslim League in 1906 as a party advocating loyalty to the British Empire, along with special privileges and reservations for the Muslim community. But the Mahatma consistently mishandled the issue and helped solidify Muslim communal politics. By 1934, when the communal division of political power and government jobs was being consolidated in law, his Congress movement was reduced to looking the other way, or what Gandhi called ‘neither accepting nor rejecting’. The phrase of ‘neither accepting nor rejecting’ summed up Gandhiji’s position vis-à-vis the ‘Communal Award’, the plan to thoroughly communalize the legislatures under the Government of India Act 1935. The secular position would have been to oppose the plan outright and to insist on non-communal assemblies elected by a single electorate comprising all voting citizens, regardless of religion, who were free to vote for any candidate, regardless of the latter’s religion. ..."

"Gandhiji took an unclear position which amounted to an unspoken acceptance of the communalization of the democratic process, a stepping-stone on the way to Partition. In particular, separate electorates meant that Muslim candidates needed to cater only to Muslim opinion, which encouraged them to take ever more sectarian positions. Regardless of any judgement of the political choices involved, Gandhi’s refusal to take sides on such a crucial issue showed a painful lack of leadership and strategic insight: fence-sitting is rarely rewarded in politics. Moreover, far from being neutral, it effectively amounted to acquiescing in the definitive communalization of the polity. ..."

"It was neither the first nor the last time that Gandhi and the Congress accepted over-representation of the Muslim community or of the Muslim League. As we have seen, even a division of 100 percent Muslim and 0 percent Hindus in the projected first Cabinet of free and undivided India had been considered by Gandhi and Azad. The Congress always took Hindus for granted, and Hindus inside the Congress failed to put up a protest commensurate with the injustice being perpetrated. ...B.R. Nanda, an avowed admirer of Gandhi, who admits in Gandhi and His Critics that ‘from the acceptance of separate electorates in the Lucknow Pact in 1916 to the acquiescence in the Communal Award in 1933, and finally to the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946, it was a continual retreat in the face of Muslim pressure.’"

"It is not polarisation to show that Congress has violated the Constitution and enacted laws providing reservation on the basis of religion. Our Constitution clearly prohibits reservations based on religion but the Congress govt in Karnataka reversed the law passed by BJP to provide reservation to OBCs and gave it to Muslims, classifying all Muslims as OBC. Even the National Commission for Backward Classes, a constitutional body, criticised this as against principles of ‘social justice’. The Congress govt in Telangana has recently said that it will replicate this move. This proves that Congress wants to reduce the reservation provided to SCs, STs and OBCs across the country and give it to minorities. What else can one expect from a party whose prime minister said that minorities have the first right on resources of this country?"

"Around 15 per cent reservation quota of the OBCs was given to Muslims in Karnataka. Congress is setting a wrong precedent by giving reservations based on religion. Founder-members of our Constitution had opposed the idea of reservations on the basis of religion... The Congress wants to snatch SC/ST and OBC quota. The party wants to give it to Muslims to settle its vote bank. Congress wants to impose an inheritance tax on private properties, and their wrong intention was exposed again."

"You see the history of Congress; this demand (for reservation) has been raised since the 1990s.... So, what was the first sin they committed? In the 90s, they decided to classify Muslims as OBCs in Karnataka. So they were rejecting and suppressing OBCs earlier, but for political gains, they labelled Muslims as OBCs. Congress was ousted from the Centre. This plan remained stalled till 2004. When Congress came back in 2004, it immediately decided to give OBC quota to Muslims in Andhra Pradesh. The matter got complicated in court. The India Parliament had decided to give 27 percent reservation to OBCs in line with the basic spirit of the Constitution. Now, they tried to loot this 27 percent quota."

"In 2006, a meeting of the National Development Council was held where there was a huge uproar over the statement of Singh. They remained quiet for two years. In the Ghoshana Patra of 2009, they mentioned it again. In 2011, there is a Cabinet Note on this where they decided to give a share from the OBC quota to Muslims. They tried this in the UP elections too but to no avail. In 2012, the Andhra High Court cancelled it. They went to Supreme Court, even there they did not get any relief. The 2014 Manifesto also talked about reservation on the basis of religion. When the Constitution of India was made, no RSS or BJP people were present. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Pandit Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and several great men of our country were present, and after long contemplation, they decided that reservation cannot be given on the basis of religion in a country like India. See their manifesto for the 2024 elections. It has the imprint of the Muslim League. The way they are flouting the Constitution, the way they are insulting Ambedkar… There is a sword of danger hanging over reservation for SCs and STs. They will make life difficult for OBCs. Should I not inform the people of the country about this? I believe that it is the responsibility of all the learned people, who are rich in knowledge, who are unbiased, to educate this country, to tell it the right things."

"Congress is fully involved in giving the reservation of SC, ST, and OBC to Muslims on the basis of religion."

"I challenge the Congress and its INDI allies to give a written statement that they will not amend the Constitution based on religion, that they will not take away the reservations of SCs, STs and OBCs and give it to a certain community, that in states where they are in power, they will not take away reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs and give it to people on the basis of faith. It’s been 10 days since I threw these challenges at them and still haven’t responded. They want to punish you but as long as I am alive, I wouldn’t let that happen."

"They have reached the stage of giving reservations on the basis of faith and insulting the Constitution. Shouldn’t there be a discussion on this conspiracy to snatch reservation from SCs, STs, OBCs and give it to others?"

"I dislike any kind of reservation, more particularly in service. I react strongly against anything which leads to inefficiency and second-rate standards."

"Reservation is not affirmative action. This is just blocking — just taking out things and saying this is for somebody, and not even caring whether those seats are filled or not. Give all the assistance that society can afford to enable people who are disadvantaged or handicapped today to compete with the others. Supposing they have poor nutrition. Okay, give them not one but three free meals in a day. If they don’t have a place to study, give them free dormitories. If they require extra tuitions, give them free tuitions. Their parents cannot let them study because they need two extra hands to earn Rs.5 a day. Okay, give them stipends to compensate for the incomes they might have earned. Give all the positive things. But when the competition starts, everybody is equal, and they must be able to compete with the others. Don’t lower standards. Throughout a person’s career, only merit, efficiency and performance should count."

"Panditji (Nehru) had rightly said that in that way (reservation) lies not only folly but disaster."

"It is more than reasonable to forecast that before the next elections, as a run-up to them, the present coalition will introduce a Bill to extend reservations to the private sector as a whole.... When the matter comes up for vote, every political party will issue three-line whips to make sure everyone notices that it is as committed to reservations as the ruling coalition..."

"As for reservations not having been extended to members of religions that repudiate caste-Islam, Christianity, Sikhism-again, that is but make-believe. The Chairman of the Minorities Commission, my friend Tarlochan Singh, sends me a list of fifty-eight castes and of fourteen tribal groups Muslim members of which have been given reservations. Even those who convert to one of these religions, continue to remain entitled to reservation. The rule in Tamil Nadu is that if the name of the father falls in the lists of Backward Castes / Most Backward Castes / Scheduled Castes / Scheduled Tribes, then, even if the person has converted to another religion, he remains entitled to reservations...."

"I feel that only those who have been oppressed by the society and have been forced to live a backward life should given reservations. If Muslims want to study, then should be given scholarships, good schools, But Muslims and Christians can't have reservation as they have ruled our country."

"The separate electorates compelled the Muslims to vote communally, think communally, listen only to communal election speeches, judge the delegates communally, look for constitutional and other reforms only in terms of more relative communal power, and express their grievances communally."

"The word Punjab is a compound of two words-Panj (Five) and aab (Water), thus signifying the land of five watrers or rivers. This origin can perhaps be traced to panch nada, Sanskrit for 'Five rivers' the word used before the advent of Muslims with a knowledge of Persian to describe the meeting point of the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers, before they joined the Indus."

"The earliest mention of five rivers in the collective sense was found in Yajurveda and a word Panchananda was used, which is a Sanskrit word to describe a land where five rivers meet. [...] In the later period the word Pentapotamia was used by the Greeks to identify this land. (Penta means 5 and potamia, water ___ the land of five rivers) Muslim Historians implied the word "Punjab " for this region. Again it was not a new word because in Persian speaking areas, there are references of this name given to any particular place where five rivers or lakes meet."

"The Panjáb, the Pentapotamia of the Greek historians, the north-western region of the empire of Hindostán, derives its name from two Persian words, panj (five), an áb (water, having reference to the five rivers which confer on the country its distinguishing features.""

"That part of India which today we call by the Persian name Penjab is named Panchanada in the sacred language of the Indians; either of which names may be rendered in Greek by Πενταποταμια. The Persian origin of the former name is not at all in doubt, although the words of which it is composed are both Indian and Persian ... But, in truth, that final word is never, to my knowledge, used by the Indians in proper names compounded in this way; on the other hand, there exist multiple Persian names which end with that word, e.g., Doab and Nilab. Therefore it is probable that the name Penjab, which is today found in all geographical books, is of more recent origin and is to be attributed to the Muslim kings of India, among whom the Persian language was mostly in use. That the Indian name Panchanada is ancient and genuine is evident from the fact that it is already seen in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the most ancient Indian poems, and that no other exists in addition to it among the Indians; for Panchála, which English translations of the Ramayana render with Penjab, ... is the name of another region, entirely distinct from Pentapotamia, as we shall see below."

"If all the Punjabis were to die to the last man without killing, Punjab will be immortal. ... Offer yourselves as non-violent, willing sacrifices."

"‘I am grieved to learn that people are running away from the West Punjab and I am told that Lahore is being evacuated by the non-Muslims. I must say that this is what it should not be. If you think Lahore is dead or is dying, do not run away from it, but die with what you think is the dying Lahore. (…) When you suffer from fear you die before death comes to you. That is not glorious. I will not feel sorry if I hear that people in the Punjab have died not as cowards but as brave men. (…) I cannot be forced to salute any flag. If in that act I am murdered I would bear no ill will against anyone and would rather pray for better sense for the person or persons who murder me.’"

"“The Punjab Muslims do not believe in non-violence and should not, therefore, be given cause for grievance because once the Muslim lion is infuriated it would become difficult to subdue him.”"

"Let no Sikh be allowed to remain in Western Punjab. “Koi Sikh rehne na pae Maghribi Punjab men”."

"We do not know why Mr. Ghulam Mohammad thought it his duty to anticipate the verdict of history regarding the responsibility of Lord Mountbatten for the tragedy of the Punjab. He is reported to have stated at a Press Conference in London that when the history of the events of this dark chapter comes to be written ‘a part of the blame-would rest on Lord Mountbatten.’ He has made two specific charges. The last British Viceroy was aware of a deep laid conspiracy by the Sikhs and Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh “to throttle Pakistan by eliminating Muslim” and refused to take action. The other charge is that Lord Mountbatten forced partition too quickly. The British Commonwealth Relations Office has repudiated both charges. It has pointed out that it was the then Governor of Punjab who had proved himself to be an avowed partisan of Muslim League, and had looked on impotently while sanguinary riots organized by the Muslim League and the Muslim National Guards took place in North Punjab in March and April 1947. It may be convenient for Mr. Ghulam Mohammed to forget that what happened in August 1947, was a mere continuation of the bloody chain of reaction which was set in motion by the Muslim League at Calcutta in August 1946. In March and April 1947, Sikhs had been brutally massacred and looted and they were abused as cowards because they had not reacted at once with violence. As a matter of fact Lord Mountbatten yielded to his pro-Muslim advisers and stationed the major portion of the Punjab Boundary Force in East Punjab with the result that there was no force to check or control the terrible massacres of Hindus and Sikhs that occurred in Sheikhupura and other places. We should certainly like an impartial investigation into the events of those days and we have no doubt it will be found that while, on the Indian side, it was the spontaneous outburst of a people indignant at what they considered the weakness and the appeasement policy of their leadership, on the Muslim side, the League, the bureaucracy, the police and the army worked like Hitler’s team with the tacit if not open approval of those in charge of the Pakistan Government."

"But the systematic manner in which Pakistan leaders are attempting to paint the people of this country as demons out to destroy innocent Muslims, while hiding, it not defending, the horrible outrages perpetrated by members of their own community from Calcutta to Sheikhupura is nothing but an attempt to defame this country and throw dust in the eyes of the outside world regarding the crimes committed by their co-religionists. They also know, as does everyone in this country, that the Punjab disaster was but the culminating act of the tragedy which began with the unprincipled campaign of communal hated and violence which they and their party leaders had been preaching for years as the only means of securing the ambition of their heart, namely, the separation of a part of this country where they could play the role of rulers, even though at the cost of unexampled suffering and misery to their own co-religionists both in Pakistan and India."

"Sikhs have some of their most sacred Gurdwaras in the West Punjab. The freedom of these Gurdwaras and access to them for purposes of worship forms the sorest point of grievance which the Sikhs have at present against the Pakistan Government, and what is regarded as the easy attitude which the Indian Government is adopting with regard to this matter so deeply vital to Sikh religious sentiment."

"The Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province had been through a brutal process of ethnic cleansing."

"We have taken a very important step by taking action on Triple Talaq. We have always thought about our Muslim sisters and mothers. If we can remove Sati Pratha, if we can think of equality for women, why shouldn't we think about removing Triple talaq for our Muslim women?... Remember how scared Muslim women were, those who suffered due to practice of Triple Talaq, but we ended that. When Islamic nations can ban it then why can't we? When we can ban Sati, when we can take strong steps against female infanticide, child marriage, then why not this?"

"For ever so long Indian Muslims, and therefore Indians in general have suffered because of this amorousness of the Muslim liberal. For a brief moment it seemed that Ayodhya would spell a change. On the one hand, the Muslim community was brought face to face with the costs of the politics of Shahabuddin, Imam Bukhari and the rest: it seemed more willing to listen to the liberal voices within it. On the other, the Muslim liberal was reminded that it was not enough for him to be liberal. If the community continued to follow obscurantist leaders, there would be a reaction, and all, including the Muslim liberal would be sucked down in its tow. Several Muslim liberals therefore began taking a lead in defining what ought to be done on issues which had become the preserve of the obscurantists. On ‘Triple talaq’ itself, as we saw, several months before Justice Tilhari gave his judgment, the Muslim Intelligentsia Meet had passed a resolution condemning the practice as being in violation of the Quran and Hadis. It had drawn attention to the ‘extreme hardship and harshness’ to which the practice exposes women. So, there was an aperture of opportunity. But the moment passed: soon enough Ali Mian, the All India Milli Council and the rest were once again in the forefront; the Muslim liberal was once again back in his cubbyhole. Each of these factors contributes to the power of the ulema. But, as we shall see, the central explanation is different."

"For, while in theory talaq is said to be so abominable to Allah, in practice the position is entirely the opposite. The jurists repeat the counsel that divorce is something from which one should abstain. But this is just counsel. As to the power, they are unanimous: it is a power which lies with the husband, and it is untrammelled. Should the husband choose to exercise it, no one, and no consideration can save the wife. The counsel itself has the caveat invariably built into it, a caveat large enough to drive an elephant through it: you should not give talaq, the jurists say adding, except when there is need for it! ... In theory talaq may be abominable but in practice the husband has the power—the absolute, unconditional power, a power for exercising which he is not accountable to anyone on earth—to throw the wife out by just uttering the word ‘talaq’."

"‘By a deplorable, though, perhaps, natural, development of the Sunni law,’ wrote Justice Faiz Badruddin Tyabji in his famous work, ‘it is the fourth and most disapproved or sinful mode of talaq (that is, the Triple talaq) which seems to be the most prevalent, and in a sense, even favoured by the law...’ Not only was it the most prevalent and favoured form, he noted, its effects are ‘aggravated’ in that talaq having been pronounced thrice, it could not but be taken to be conclusive and irrevocable. That was Justice Badruddin Tyabji writing eighty years ago. Forty years ago, Justice Shahmiri observed that as this form of divorcing the wife is the ‘least onerous for husbands, it is the most prevalent form obtaining in India.’10 Eighty years ago... Forty years ago... And three years ago Professor Tahir Mahmood noted, ‘For centuries the common Muslim has believed that the so-called ‘Triple talaq’ is the only ‘Islamic’ form of divorce...’, that ‘Divorce by a Muslim husband in this country (India) almost invariably means a Triple talaq’—with the concept of a single revocable talaq people have little acquaintance.’"

"The ‘Triple talaq’ ‘is the heretical or irregular mode of divorce,’ Syed Ameer Ali wrote over a hundred years ago in his famous Muhammadan Law, ‘which was introduced in the second century of the Mahommedan era. It was then that the Omeyyade monarchs, finding that the checks imposed by the Prophet on the facility of repudiation interfered with the indulgence of their caprice, endeavoured to find an escape from the strictness of the law, and found in the pliability of the jurists a loophole to effect their purpose.’"

"In a recent essay Tahir Mahmood goes even further: on his reckoning the Triple talaq is not just a rule which the Islamic jurists formulated to help women be rid of undesirable husbands, it is a rule which the jurists came to recognize and accept at the initiative of the aggrieved women! ‘This simple but meaningful reform introduced by the Prophet got corrupted in the course of time,’ he writes, recounting that the Prophet’s pronouncements constituted a deterrent to husbands and that they put limits on what a husband could do. ‘In fits of anger husbands began pronouncing on their wives “three divorces at a time”. And married women, sick of their tyrant husbands, in a bid to get rid of them, insisted that “three divorces at a time” should be given the effect of third-time divorce so as to instantly divorce the marriage. To help wives in distress, most jurists of the time agreed.’"

"Addressing the Maharashtra assembly, Women and Child Development Minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha said, "PM Modi took a big decision by taking action against Triple Talaq. By banning triple talaq, he did justice to the women of India. He gave chance to those who were oppressed and liberated them.""

"When I abolished triple talaq and ended that practice, muslim sisters feel that I am genuine about their concerns."

"The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from which the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews derived Hindus their knowledge."

"That Hindu astronomical lore about ancient times cannot be based on later back-calculation, was also argued by Playfair’s contemporary, the French astronomer jean-Sylvain Bailly: “The motions of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the [modern] tables of Cassini and Meyer. The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as that discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also the Arabs.”"

"The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang."

"“The observations on which the astronomy of India is founded, were made more than three thousand years before the Christian era. (…) Two other elements of this astronomy, the equation of the sun’s centre and the obliquity of the ecliptic (…) seem to point to a period still more remote, and to fix the origin of this astronomy 1000 or 1200 years earlier, that is, 4300 years before the Christian era”."

"All this at least on the assumption that Playfair’s, Bailly’s and Rajaram’s claims about the Hindu astronomical tables are correct. Disputants may start by proving them factually wrong, but should not enter the dispute arena without a refutation of the astronomers’ assertions. It is something of a scandal that Playfair’s and Bailly’s findings have been lying around for two hundred years while linguists and indologists were publishing speculations on Vedic chronology in stark disregard for the contribution of astronomy.... One of the earliest estimates of the date of the Vedas was at once among the most scientific. In 1790, the Scottish mathematician John Playfair demonstrated that the starting-date of the astronomical observations recorded in the tables still in use among Hindu astrologers (of which three copies had reached Europe between 1687 and 1787) had to be 4300 BC. His proposal was dismissed as absurd by some, but it was not refuted by any scientist."

"Since the 1780s, Western researchers (Playfair, Bailly, Jacobi) have noticed data in Indian astronomy, both astronomical tables and stray astronomical references in religious and epic texts, which, through the millennial clock of the precession, indicate a surprisingly high chronology for Vedic civilization... Against the consistent and straightforward high-chronology interpretation of the astronomical evidence, the AIT has never offered a consistent interpretation of these data supporting its own low chronology. All we have is piecemeal attempts to deconstruct one datum or another, weakening its logical impact or dismissing it as imprecise.... In spite of this poverty in alternative explanations, nobody seems to be bothered by this inability to refute the stubborn astronomical evidence or to domesticate it somehow into the prevalent paradigm....Disputants may start by trying to prove Playfair and Bailly factually wrong. Indeed, I think it is high time to recheck their argumentation on the basis of all their original data. Meanwhile , it remains something of a scandal that Playfair's and Bailly's findings have been lying around for two hundred years while linguists and Indologists were publishing speculations on Vedic chronology in stark disregard for the contribution of astronomy."

"The astronomical lore in Vedic literature provides elements of an absolute chronology in a consistent way. Moreover, it is encouraging to note that the astronomical evidence is free of contradictions. There would be a real problem if the astronomical indications had put the Upanishads earlier than the Rg-Veda, or Kalidasa earlier than the Brahmanas, but that is not the case: the astronomical evidence is consistent. Inconsistency would give support to the predictable objection that these astronomical references are but poetical fabulation without any scientific contents. However, the facts are just the opposite. To the extent that there are astronomical indications in the Vedas, these form a consistent set of data detailing an absolute chronology for Vedic literature in full agreement with the known relative chronology of the different texts of this literature. They contradict the hypothesis that the Vedas were composed after an invasion in ca. 1500 BC. Not one of the astronomical data in Vedic literature confirms the AIT-based low Vedic chronology.... Indeed, the whole corpus of astronomical evidence is hard to reconcile with the AIT, and has been standing as a growing challenge to the AIT for two centuries, i.e. from before the AIT had even been thought up. A convincing refutation would require an alternative but consistent (philogically as well as astronomically sound) interpretation of the existing astronomical indications that brings Vedic literature down to a much later age. But so far, such a reading of those text passages has not been offered. There is as yet no astronomical information which puts the Vedas at an AIT-compatible date."

"“By adding the hymn counts of the ten books of the Rig-Veda in different combinations, we obtain numbers that are factors of the sidereal periods and the five synodic periods (…) The probability of this happening is about one in a million. Hence whoever arranged the Rig-Veda encoded into it not only obvious numbers like the lunar year but also hidden numbers of great astronomical significance.”"

"If we exclude the possibility of every astronomical notice in Vedic literature being a record of ancient tradition, which is extremely unlikely, we can say that there is strong astronomical evidence that the Vedas are older than B.C. 2500. They might be as old as B.C. 4000. There is some support for this date, but it is not convincing."

"Whither by day depart the constellations that shine at night, set high in heaven above us? Varuṇa's holy laws remain unweakened, and through the night the Moon moves on in splendor."

"Urge thou these heroes on to slay the enemy, brave Thunderer! in the fight with swords. Even when hid among the tribes of Sages numerous as stars."

"Like a dark steed adorned with pearl, the Fathers have decorated heaven With constellations. They set the light in day, in night the darkness. Bṛhaspati cleft the rock and found the cattle."

"Sage Maruts, may we be the drivers of the car of riches ful I of life that have been given by you. O Maruts, let that wealth in thousands dwell with us which never vanishes like Tisya from the sky."

"May those five Bulls which stand on high full in the midst of mighty heaven, Having together swiftly borne my praises to the Gods, return. Mark this my woe, ye Earth and Heaven."

"They yoke the red horse who moves around those who stand. The lights (or constellations) shine in Heaven (1.6.1)."

"With the Maruts, Indra, let your friendship be. Then you will defeat all enemies. The three times sixty Maruts, increasing you, are holy like a mass of rays (or stars) (VIII.96.7-8)."

"The Maruts are visible from afar, like the heavenly ones with the stars (I.166.11)."

"Like Heaven with the stars, Agni appears along both firmaments (II.2.5).7"

"Agni is first established here by the ordainers, the holy invoker, to be worshipped in the sacrifices. The bearer of truth, most wise, he appears as Heaven with the stars (IV.7.1,3)."

"They gleam with armlets as the heavens are decked with stars, like cloud-born lightnings shine the torrents of their rain. Since the strong Rudra, O Maruts with brilliant chests, sprang into life for you in Pṛśni's radiant lap."

"The seers of ten rays first thought out the sacrifice. May they direct us in the breaking of the dawn. The dawn opens up the night with her red horses, with the great light of the luminous sea of milk (II.34.12)."

"Seven yoke the chariot that has one wheel. One horse conveys it who has seven names (I.164.3)."

"Our fathers who drove up the wealth made of light, by Indra at the end of the year they destroyed Vala. By the truth they made the Sun rise in Heaven (X.62.2- 3)."

"Pushan was born in the start of the path, in the path of Heaven, in the path of the Earth. Both beloved stations he circles to and from with knowledge (X.17.6)."

"May Mitra, Varuna, the sun, the destroyer, the portents from the earth and the atmosphere, and the planets moving in the sky (divicarā grahāh) bring well-being to us. (AV 19.9.7)"

"May the planets belonging to the moon, the sun, and Rāhu bring well-being. May the deadly comets and the Rudras of the keen brightness bring well-being. (AV 19.9.10)"

"Ibn Battuta’s description of the preparation of samosa would make one’s mouth water even today: “Minced meat cooked with almond, walnut, pistachios, onion and spices placed inside a thin bread and fried in ghee.”"

"Pāṇini, ArthŚā, BṛSam and Vṛkṣ(S) define the word [for wheat] as a type of grain distinct from barley and rice [...] Additionally, NāmaMā makes a curious remark: it is a mlecchabhojya, 'a food of barbarians‘."

"The savage, by his chace and the perpetual war in which he lives with the elements, is enabled to devour almost raw the flesh of the animals he has killed. In more civilised nations, the plowman from his labour is enabled to digest in its coarsest preparations the wheat he has sown. Either of these foods would destroy the common inhabitant of Indostan, as he exists at present: his food is rice. To provide this grain, we see a man of no muscular strength carrying a plough on his shoulder to the field, which the season or reservoirs of water have overflown. This slender instrument of his agriculture, yoked to a pair of diminutive and feeble oxen, is traced, with scarce the impression of a furrow, over the ground, which is afterwards sown. The remaining labour consists in supplying the field with water; which is generally effected to no greater a toil than undamming the canals, which derive from the great reservoir. If in some places this water is drawn from wells, in most parts of India it is supplied by rain; as the rice in those parts, when the rainy season is of two or three months duration, is always sown just before this season begins. When reaped, the women separate the grain from the husk in wooden mortars, or it is trampled by oxen. Instead of hedges, the field is inclosed with a slender bank of earth. A grain obtained with so little labour, has the property of being the most easily digestible of any preparation use for food, and is therefore the only proper one for such an effeminate race as I have described. There is wheat in India; it is produced only in the sharper regions, where rice will not so easily grow, and where the cultivator acquires a firmer fibre than the inhabitant of the plain. It was probably introduced with the Alcoran, as all the Mahomedans of northern extraction prefer it to rice, as much as an Indian rejects a nourishment which he cannot well digest even in its finest preparation."

"Water is the only drink of every Indian respectable enough to be admitted into their assemblies of public worship, as all inebriating liquors are forbore through a principle of religion; not that the soil is wanting in productions proper to compose the most intoxicating, nor themselves in the art of preparing them for the outcasts of their own nation, or others of persuasions different from their own, who chuse to get drunk. They have not equally been able to refrain from the use of spices and these the hottest, without which they never make a meal. Ginger is produced in their gardens as easily as radishes are in ours; and chilli, the highest of all vegetable productions used for food, insomuch that it will blister the skin, grows spontaneously: these, with turmeric, are the principal ingredients of their cookery, and by their plenty are always within the reach of the poorest. A total abstinence from animal food is not so generally observed amongst them as is imagined; even the Bramins will eat fish; but as they never prepare either fish or flesh without mixing them with much greater quantities of spices than Europeans suffer in their ragouts, animal food never makes more than the slightest portion of their meal, and the preference of vegetables, of which they have various kinds in plenty is decisively marked amongst them all. The cow is sacred every where: milk, from a supposed resemblance with the ‘amortam’ or nectar of their gods, is religiously esteemed the purest of foods, and receives the preference to vegetables in their nourishment. If the rice harvest should fail, which sometimes happens in some parts of India, there are many other resources to prevent the inhabitant from perishing: there are grains of a coarser kind and larger volume than rice, which require not the same continuation of heat, and at the same time the same supplies of water, to be brought to perfection: there are roots, such as the Indian potatoe, radish, and others of the turnip kind, which without manure acquire a larger size than the same species of vegetables in Europe, when assisted with all the arts of agriculture, although much inferior to those of Peru, of which Garcilaffa della Vega gives so astonishing a description: there are ground fruits of the pumpkin and melon kind, which come to maturity with the same facility, and of which a single one is sufficient to furnish a meal for three persons, who receive sufficient nourishment from this slender diet. The fruit-trees of other countries furnish delicacies to the inhabitant, and scarcely any thing more; in India there are many which furnish at once a delicacy and no contemptible nourishment: the palm and the coco trees give in their large nuts a gelatinous substance, on which men, when forced to the experience by necessity, have subsisted for fifty days: the jack-tree produces a rich, glewy, and nutritive fruit: the papa and the plantain-tree grow to perfection, and give their fruit within the year: the plantain, in some of its kinds, supplies the place of bread, and in all is of excellent nourishment. These are not all the presents which the luxuriant hand of nature gives as food to the inhabitant of India…The sun forbids the use of fuel in any part of the year, as necessary to procure warmth; and what is necessary to dress their victuals, is chiefly supplied by the dung of their cows."

"Should any European enter their houses, they imagine them to be the polluted: neither will they eat or drink anything that has been touched by Europeans, or even Moors, who they hate – and not without reason, for they are a lazy, haughty people, oppressing without mercy where they have any power."

"The food of those who can afford it is partly of meat, mutton of goats or sheep, which sells at about three pence per pound. Beef is not procurable, as the Sikh ruler punishes the death of a cow capitally. The chief food of the people is vegetable; turnips, cabbages, and radishes, the Sinhara, or water-nut, and rice. The turnips are purple, or reddish, and speedily become woolly: the radishes are mostly white and strong: the cabbages do not head, but the leaves are frequently stripped. Besides these, lettuces, spinach, and other common vegetables are in extensive use, boiled into a sort of soup, with a little salt, or even the leaves of the dandelion, dock, plantain, and mallow; and the catkins of the walnut are employed as food, seasoned with a little salt, mustard, and walnut oil... Another principle article of the food of the common people, the Sinhara, or water-nut, grows abundantly in the different lakes in the vicinity of the capital, and especially in the Wular lake, which yields an average return of ninety-six to a hundred and twenty thousand ass-loads a year. It is fished up from the bottom in small nets, and affords employment to the fishermen for several months. It constitutes the almost only food of at least thirty thousand persons for five months in the year. After being extracted from the shell the nuts are eaten, raw, boiled, roasted, fried, or dressed in various ways, after being reduced to flour. The most common preparation is boiling one ser of the flour with two quarts of water, so as to form a sort of gruel, which, though insipid, is nutritive. The Sinhara, in the shell, is sold in about a rupee per load... Another article of food derived form the lakes is the stem of the Nymphaea Lotus. In the autumn, after the plate of the leaf has begun to decay, this has acquired maturity, and, being boiled till tender, furnishes a wholesome and nutritious article, which supports, perhaps, five thousand persons in the city for nearly eight months."

"Of the poverty of these people, however, I had no idea till I this day saw the bread they eat. It is the grain of a kind of holcus, and looks like clover-seed: the flour, bran, husk and all, is made into thick coarse cakes, like those for elephants, and these are not baked as the elephants’ bread is, but laid on the fire and scorched or toasted there, so that part is raw dough, part ashes. To such a people potatoes must, indeed, be an exceeding and obvious blessing."

"Beef is as much a forbidden food in the Punjab as pork is in Hindostan to the natives; and to kill a cow across the Sutlege would subject the perpetrator of the deed to almost certain death."

"Bullets for the kar sevaks, biryani for the Kashmiri militants."

"The Rohillas, especially the lower classes, were, with but few exceptions, the only sect of Mahometans in India who exercised the profession of husbandry; and their improvements of the various branches of agriculture, were amply recompensed by the abundance and superiour quality of the production of Rohilcund."

"If farmers become weak the country loses self-reliance but if they are strong, freedom also becomes strong. If we do not maintain our progress in agriculture, poverty cannot be eliminated from India. But our biggest poverty alleviation programme is to improve the of our farmers. The thrust of our poverty alleviation programmes is on the uplift of the farmers."

"In the history of human culture the contribution of the Indian peoples in all fields has been of the greatest importance. From India we are said to have derived domestic poultry, shellac, lemons, cotton, jute, rice, sugar, indigo, the buffalo, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, sugar-cane, the games of chess, Pachisi, Polo, the Zero concept, the decimal system, the basis of certain philological concepts, a wealth of fables with moral import, an astonishing variety of artistic products, and innumerable ideas in philosophy and religion such as asceticism and monasticism."

"There is really no Indian agriculture as such, but a group of related regional complexes differing in important details, including inventories of cultivated plants. Sanskrit, being a supraregional language, incorporates terms relating to various regional features."

"May the ploughshares break up our land happily; may the ploughman go happily with the oxen; may Parjanya (water the earth) with sweet showers happily."

"The conquest, the quickened pace of commerce, and the increase of traffic between India and the heartlands of the Umayyad and Abbāsid caliphates, as well as western Asia, Africa and Europe, also led to a noteworthy dissemination of numerous Indian crops... and new agricultural techniques to parts of the world far beyond India. This process was relatively slow and less easily visible, but its results revolutionised agriculture and may well have been the most significant legacy of early Muslim rule in Sind over the long term."

"Speaking of the weightages granted to the Muslims by the Lucknow Pact, the authors of the Joint Report observed:— "Now a privileged position of this kind is open to the objection, that if any other community here after makes good a claim to separate representation, it can be satisfied only by deducting the non-Muslim seats, or by a rateable deduction from both Muslim and non-Muslim; and Hindu and Muslim opinion are not likely to agree which process should be adopted. While, therefore, for reasons that we explain subsequently we assent to the maintenance of separate representation for Muhammadans, we are bound to reserve our approval of the particular proposals set before us, until we have ascertained what the effect upon other interests will be, and have made fair provision for them.""

"Notwithstanding this grave flaw in the Lucknow Pact, the Government of India, in its despatch referred to above, recommended that the terms of the Pact should be improved in so far as it related to the Muslims of Bengal. Its reasons make a strange reading. It argued that :— "The Muhammadan representation which they [the authors of the Pact] propose for Bengal is manifestly insufficient. It is questionable whether the claims of the Muhammadan population of Eastern Bengal were adequately pressed when the Congress-League compact was in the making. They are conspicuously a backward and impoverished community. The repartition of the presidency in 1912 came as a severe disappointment to them, and we should be very loath to fail in seeing that their interests are now generously secured. In order to give the Bengal Muslims a representation proportionate to their numbers, and no more, we should allot them 44 instead of 34 seats [due to them under the Pact].""

"The negotiations following upon these demands resulted in agreement between the Hindus and the Muslims which is known as the Lucknow Pact. It may be said to contain two clauses. One related to legislation, under which it was agreed that :— "No Bill, nor any clause thereof, nor a resolution introduced by a nonofficial affecting one or other community (which question is to be determined by the members of that community in the Legislative Council concerned) shall be proceeded with, if three-fourths of the members of that community in the particular Council, Imperial and Provincial, oppose the Bill or any clause thereof or the resolution." The other clause related to the proportion of Muslim representation. With regard to the Imperial Legislative Council the Pact provided :— "That one-third of the Indian elected members should be Muhammadans, elected by separate electorates in the several Provinces, in the proportion, as nearly as might be, in which they were represented on the provincial legislative councils by separate Muhammadan electorates.""

"The growing of cotton appears earlier in India than elsewhere; apparently it was used for cloth in Mohenjo-daro.15 In our oldest classical reference to cotton Herodotus says, with pleasing ignorance: “Certain wild trees there bear wool instead of fruit, which in beauty and quality excels that of sheep; and the Indians make their clothing from these trees.”16 It was their wars in the Near East that acquainted the Romans with this tree-grown “wool.”17 Arabian travelers in ninth-century India reported that “in this country they make garments of such extraordinary perfection that nowhere else is their like to be seen—sewed and woven to such a degree of fineness, they may be drawn through a ring of moderate size.”18 The medieval Arabs took over the art from India, and their word quttan gave us our word cotton.19 The name muslin was originally applied to fine cotton weaves made in Mosul from Indian models; calico was so called because it came (first in 1631) from Calicut, on the southwestern shores of India. “Embroidery,” says Marco Polo, speaking of Gujarat in 1293 A.D., “is here performed with more delicacy than in any other part of the world.”20 The shawls of Kashmir and the rugs of India bear witness even today to the excellence of Indian weaving in texture and design.IV But weaving was only one of the many handicrafts of India, and the weavers were only one of the many craft and merchant guilds that organized and regulated the industry of India."

"The women wore a flowing robe—colorful silk sari, or homespun khaddar—which passed over both shoulders, clasped the waist tightly, and then fell to the feet; often a few inches of bronze flesh were left bare below the breast. Hair was oiled to guard it against the desiccating sun; men divided theirs in the center and drew it together into a tuft behind the left ear; women coiled a part of theirs upon their heads, but let the rest hang free, often decorating it with flowers, or covering it with a scarf. The men were handsome, the young women were beautiful and all presented a magnificent carriage; an ordinary Hindu in a loin cloth often had more dignity than a European diplomat completely equipped. Pierre Loti thought it “incontestable that the beauty of the Aryan race reaches its highest development of perfection and refinement among the upper class” in India. Both sexes were adept in cosmetics, and the women felt naked without jewelry. A ring in the left nostril denoted marriage. On the forehead, in most cases, was a painted symbol of religious faith."

"Textiles were woven with an artistry never since excelled; from the days of Cæsar to our own the fabrics of India have been prized by all the world, Sometimes, by the subtlest and most painstaking of precalculated measurements, every thread of warp and woof was dyed before being placed upon the loom; the design appeared as the weaving progressed, and was identical on either side. From homespun khaddar to complex brocades flaming with gold, from picturesque pyjamas to the invisibly-seamed shawls of Kashmir, every garment woven in India has a beauty that comes only of a very ancient, and now almost instinctive, art."

"On that occasion I gave a mantra, ‘Before Independence, Khadi was for the nation; after Independence, let Khadi be used for fashion.’ But I don’t insist people to become khadidhari—that is, wear only Khadi and nothing else. My appeal is that if you have numerous varieties of fabrics in your home, why not make it a point to ensure that Khadi is one of them? Just make it a point to buy Khadi products whenever you can. This campaign is carried out all over the state. As a result, we have witnessed a 40 per cent increase in the sale of Khadi in that one week of Gandhi Jayanti. I also introduced this tradition of offering a Khadi handkerchief and a book instead of offering a bouquet of flowers to dignitaries. I tell people if you give somebody flowers, within a day or two they will land in a pile of garbage. But if you give a book, it can pass on from person to person. So in every aspect of my social reform efforts, you will see the imprint of Gandhi."

"Then, as always, when Indian and European women meet, the conversation turned to the sari, this beautiful piece of clothing ... next to which each model dress of Chanel or Dior looks ridiculous, clumsy and graceless."

"It's not that the woman adjusts to the sari; rather the sari adjusts to the woman. The sari is just a strip of fabric without form; it's the Sari's wearer to give it a shape."

"The turban is not a symbol of Islam. If you had done your homework you would have discovered that, far from defining it as an "Islamic garment", all dictionaries and encyclopaedias define it as "Oriental or women's head-dress". And the Orient, thank God, is not composed of Muslim countries only. It includes India, for instance, which despite Muslim invasions has always managed to remain Hindu. In India the turban was used a long time before Prophet Mohammed. Think of the black turban of the gurus, of the jewelled turban of the maharajas, of the red turban of the Sikhs who by the way are the most unbending enemies of Islam."

"In November 2017, New York Times painted India’s decision to promote its indigenous textile industry as an obstacle in country’s growth. “Since the Bharatiya Janata Party formed a national government in 2014, the Indian fashion industry has been pressed to aggressively promote traditional attire and bypass Western styles” (Qadri, 2017, para, 3). It's ignorance to attack the promotion of local industries of Saree, which has been women’s attire in the Indian subcontinent since Indus valley civilisation and continues to be so today as well. “During his campaign, Mr. Modi had promised to revive the tradition of the Banarasi Saree and to help its weavers, a significant percentage of the constituency’s electorate. The weavers, who are mostly Muslim and following a family trade, largely live in poverty” (Qadri, 2017, para. 14). To prove its point, New York Times goes on to falsely claim that clothing choices are being imposed upon people. “Mr. Modi has made traditional dress a priority and, as many in the country want to please him, the fashion industry has followed along”."

"The want of raiment is scarce an inconvenience; and the most wealthy remain by choice almost naked, when in their own families and free from the intercourse of strangers; so that all the manufacturers of cloth, for which India is so famous, derive more from the decency of their character; the luxurious taste of a rich and enervated people; and from the spirit of commerce which has prevailed among them from time immemorial; than from wants really felt; and if the manufacture of a piece of cloth was not the least laborious task in which a man can be employed in India, it is probable that the whole nation would at this day be as naked as their Gymnosophists, of which the ancients say so much and knew so little."

"The dress of the Kashmirians consists of a large turban, awkwardly put on; a great woolen vest, with wide sleeves; and a sack, wrapped in many folds round the middle; under the vest, which may be properly called a wrapper, the higher class of people wear a pirahun, or shirt, and drawers; but the lower order have no under garment, nor do they even gird up their loins… The dress of the women is no less aukward than that of the men, and is ill adapted to display the beauties they naturally possess. Their outward, and, often, only garment, is of cotton, and shaped like a long loose shirt. Over the hair, which falls in a single braid, they wear a close cap, usually of a woollen cloth, of a crimson colour; and to the hinder part of it is attached a triangular piece of the same stuff, which, falling on the back, conceals much of the hair. Around the lower edge of the cap is rolled a small turban, fastened behind with a short knot, which seemed to me the only artificial ornament about them. You will be pleased to notice, that I speak of the dress of the ordinary women, such only being permitted to appear in public. The women of the higher classes are never seen abroad; nor is it consistent with the usage of any Mahometan nation, even to speak of the female part of a family."

"The dress of the people, both male and female, commonly consists of a long loose wrapper and trowsers, the former of woollen cloth. As a further protection against the cold in winter the Kashmirians usually carry under their tunic an earthen pot with a small quantity of live charcoal, a practice that invariably discolours and sears the skin, and not unfrequently occasions palsy. ....The Hindu women never go veiled, and never affect concealment, either at home or abroad."

"They are hardy, stout men, particularly those of the Catteywar and Cutch districts. Their usual dress is a petticoat round the waist, like that of the Bheels, and a cotton cloth wrapped round their heads and shoulders, which, when they wish to be smart, they gather up into a very large white turban. In cold weather, or when drest, they add a quilted cotton kirtle, or “lebada,” over which they wear a shirt of mail, with vant-braces and gauntlets, and never consider themselves as fit to go abroad without a sword, buckler, bow and arrows, to which their horsemen add a long spear and battle-axe. The cotton lebada is generally stained and iron-moulded by the mail shirt, and, as might be expected, these marks, being tokens of their martial occupation, are reckoned honourable, insomuch that their young warriors often counterfeit them with oil or soot, and do their best to get rid as soon as possible of the burgher-like whiteness of a new dress. This is said to be the real origin of the story told by Hamilton, that the Coolies despise and revile all cleanly and decent clothing as base and effeminate. In other respects they are found of finery; their shields are often very handsome, with silver bosses, and composed of rhinoceros-hide; their battle-axes richly inlaid, and their spears surrounded with many successive rings of silver. Their bows are like those of the Bheels, but stronger, and in better order; and their arrows are carried in a quiver of red and embroidered leather."

"The Mahratta dress consists only of two garments, which are a tight body to the waist, with sleeves tight to the elbow; a piece of silk, some twenty yards or more in length, which they wind around them as a petticoat, and then, taking a part of it, draw it between the limb and fasten it behind in a manner that gives it the effect both of petticoat and trousers; this is the whole dress unless, at times, they substitute angiyas, with short sleeves, for the tight long-sleeved body."

"Upper Assam, Jan. 15th [1836] – We arrived at Kujoo, a rather large village of Singfos, and within half a day’s journey of which the tea is found in its native state…The people themselves are fair, much like the Burmese, but still quite distinct. The male dress resembles the Burmese much; the females is more distinct, consisting chiefly of a sort of gown; and whilst tattooing is confined to the males in Burma, it here appears to be indulged in chiefly by the ladies; all the legs I saw during the day, being ornamented with rings of tattoo. The men are a stout, rather fine race; free, easy, and independent, and great admirers of grog in every form."

"Here is no part of the costume where the natives shew such variety of taste as in the arranging of the hair. And this does not as far as I can see depend on religious distinction. Some cover the head with a load of folded cloth, others wear no covering on it, and have the hair cropped close. Some wear little caps and the hair reaching down to the shoulders, where it is cut square across. Others have a broad line shaven from the forehead to the nape of the neck, and others cut off the hair above the forehead from ear to ear. And it is not uncommon to see the whole head shaven except one long tuft on the crown. The Mussulmanns have generally fine beards. But the Hindoos almost always shave theirs."

"The colours used by the Indian craftsmen for their textiles, writes Robinson, were not only brilliant and of great variety, they were also often exceedingly subtle and particularly so in their tonal qualities: Their colours seem to contain hidden qualities and effects that only appear in differing lights. The pagris or headwear produces in Rajasthan (originally Rajputana), Kotah and Alwar contained two slightly differing shades which produced a constantly changing colour pattern as the fabric rippled."

"During the Emergency period some followers of the Jamaat-e-Islami found themselves in the same jail as the members of the RSS; here they began to discover that the latter were no monsters as described by the 'nationalist' and secularist propaganda. Therefore they began to think better of the Hindus. This alarmed the secularists and the interested Maulvis. Some Maulvis belonging to the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Hind met President.. Fakhruddin Ahmad, and reported to him about the growing rapport between the members of the two communities. This 'stunned' the President and he said that this boded an 'ominous' future for Congress Muslim leaders and he promised that he would speak to Indiraji about this dangerous development and ensure that Muslims remain Muslims."

"Non-violence and the advice given by Mrs. Sucheta Kripalani, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Rajendra Prasad, etc., to stay out where they were with a firm trust in God appeared to most of the victims as a counsel of perfection which could only be given from a safe distance. Who else came to the rescue of the people at this stage, but a band of young selfless Hindus- popularly known as the RSS? They organised in every Mohalla of every town of the province the work of evacuation of the Hindu and Sikh women and children from dangerous pockets t comparatively safe centres. They organised for their feeding, medical aid, clothing and care. Parties for the protection of institutions were organised. Even fire engine brigades were formed. in various towns. Arrangements for transport by lorries and uses and provision of escort on the trains carrying the fleeing Hindus and Sikhs were organised. Day and night vigils in various Hindu and Sikh localities were kept up and people were taught how to defend themselves when attacked. When the Situation on the eve of Partition became very serious and law and order utterly broke down-or it would be more correct to say, was now used only to suppress the Hindus and Sikhs,— several members of the RSS showed their proficiency in the use of fire weapons. it almost became a tit for tat. These young men were the first to come to the help of the stricken Hindus and Sikhs and were the last to leave their places for safety in the East Punjab. I could name several Congress leaders of note in the various districts of Punjab who openly solicited the help of the RSS even for their own protection and the protection of their kith and kin. No request for help from any quarter was refused and there are cases which came to our notice where the Muslim women and children were safely escorted out of the Hindu Mohallas and sent to Muslim League refugee centres in Lahore by the RSS men."

"I also found during my tour of the East Punjab a deep: sense of gratitude and gratefulness to the Sikhs and the Sanghies among the masses. They were considered the saviours of the people and it was a universal belief that they had made the rehabilitation of a part of the Hindu and Sikh refugees possible in the East Punjab. A few lakhs of them had at least found a temporary shelter in the vacated house and lands. Judging in the light of subsequent history of rehabilitation of refugees, one shudders to think of what would have happened to these refugees if like the other unfortunate refugees they had also to seek shelter in refugee camps and on road-side..."

"Their (RSS) discipline, their physical fitness and their selflessness in face of dangers came to the rescue of the people in the Punjab when the whole province was burning and when the Congress leaders were helplessly fiddling at New Delhi, not being able to overcome the opposition of the Muslim League and the obstinacy of the Governor-General to their proposal for stronger action for the maintenance of law and order. If now somebody from a place outside the Punjab were to call upon the Hindus and Sikhs of the Punjab to disown the Sikhs and RSS- heroes who defended them gloriously, his advice is sure to fall. on absolutely deaf ears."

"The refugees from the West Pakistan —all of them without exception wherever they are living in India, to a man are grateful to RSS for coming to their help at a time when they felt deserted by all."

"Many workers appear to take a delight in blaming others for all ills. Some may put the blame on the political perversities, others on the aggressive activities of the Christians or Muslims and such other faiths. Let our workers keep their minds free from such tendencies and work for our people and our Dharma in the right spirit, lend a helping hand to all our brethren who need help and strive to relieve distress wherever we see it. In this service no distinction should be made between man and man. We have to serve all, be he a Christian or a Muslim or a human being of any other persuasion; for, calamities, distress and misfortunes make no such distinction but afflict all alike. And in serving to relieve the sufferings of man let it not be in a spirit of condescension or mere compassion but as devoted worship of the Lord abiding in the heart of all beings, in the true spirit of our dharma of surrendering our all in the humble service of Him who is Father, Mother, Brother, Friend and Everything to us all. And may our actions succeed in bringing out the Glory and Effulgence of our Sanatana-Eternal - Dharma."

"A reading of the RSS history tells us that seva has always been at the core of Hindutva praxis. Since its inception, an important aspect of the organization’s work revolved around providing service in the form of relief during natural and political calamities such as the Partition of India in 1947, the Assam earthquake of 1950, the Punjab Floods in 1955, the Tamil Nadu cyclone in 1955, the Anjar earthquake in 1956, the Andhra Cyclone of 1977, the Latur earthquake of 1993, the Odisha Super Cyclone in 1999, the Bhuj earthquake in 2001, Koshi River Floods in 2008 and most recently the Uttarakhand Floods in 2013. Apart from creating a humanitarian and compassionate image for itself, _ relief interventions after these disasters also provided opportunities to the RSS to undertake cadre building and consolidate its organizational network."

"In both India and Pakistan civilian politics have taken on a military tinge, with some political parties sponsoring paramilitary organisations whose members wear uniforms, march in formation with flags and carry sticks to menace their opponents. Or in the case of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) it looks more as though the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sponsors it."

"Bhagva Dhwaj represents the tradition and history of the Hindus, the saints and sages from Vedic times and all heroes of Hindu history. It is the undisputable Guru of all those who call themselves Hindus."

"Any Indian who comes with the intention to settle in Kashmir will be treated as an agent of RSS and not as a civilian and will be dealt with appropriately."

"The realms of high culture that in more civilised countries resonate with literature, music and art are occupied in India by Bollywood and trashy TV serials. Inevitable, since mass education is such a mess that most children leave school without learning to read a storybook. Reading is so out of fashion that most small towns in India have no bookshops, most villages have no libraries and, in our bigger cities, bookshops stock mostly books and magazines written in English. So when the RSS leaders turned up in Delhi last week to tell the Minister of Human Resource Development that they wanted changes in school education, they had a point. Unfortunately, because the RSS is led by doddering old bigots and provincial intellectuals, this ‘cultural’ organisation is in no position to give the HRD Minister worthwhile advice. The RSS leaders who met the minister reportedly confined their concerns to history books that they claim portray a ‘Western’ view of history. They demanded that these books be replaced by those written by historians with an Indian view of history. They have a point, but they make it badly. [...] In the interests of 'secularism', most Indian schools and colleges provide only limited courses for the study of ancient India, and Sanskrit literature. So the vast majority of Indian children grow up with a sense of being Indian that is restricted to a religious identity. When this gets infused with a toxic sort of nationalism, as happens in RSS educational institutions, the result is bigotry of a lethal kind."

"“RSS is a revolutionary organisation. No other organisation in the country comes anywhere near it. It alone has the capacity to transform society, end casteism and wipe the tears from the eyes of the poor. I have great expectations from this revolutionary organisation that has taken up the challenge of creating a new India.”"

"It has been found that in several parts of the country individual members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect fire arms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military."

"The idea of Fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst peoples. India and particularly Hindu India need some such Institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus… Our Institution of Rashtriya Svayamsewak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived."

"We have a great deal of evidence to show that the R.S.S. is an organization which is in the nature of a private army and which is definitely proceeding on strictest Nazi lines, even following the technique of organization. […] The Nazi party brought Germany to ruin and I have little doubt that if these tendencies are allowed to spread and increase in India, they would do enormous injury to India."

"These people have the blood of Mahatma Gandhi on their hands and pious disclaimers and dissociation now have no meaning."

"Reports from many sources have reached me that the communal atmosphere is again becoming tense, and that particularly the people who belong to the RSS…are becoming vocal and demonstrative again…. Many of the RSS men who had been arrested previously, detained in prison for sometime and then subsequently released, are again taking part in these activities in spite of assurances they might have given."

"As you know, the ban on the RSS has been removed…. This does not mean that we are convinced about the bona fides of the RSS movement…. Our general relaxation in the field of civil liberties will certainly not mean the slightest relaxation in meeting violence against the individual or the state, wherever it occurs and whatever form it might take."

"…RSS is again resuming some of its activities…. The whole mentality of the RSS is a fascist mentality. Therefore, their activities have to be very closely watched."

"The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the state."

"Organising the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing…apart from this, their opposition to the Congress, that to of such virulence, disregarding all considerations of personality, decay of decorum, created a kind of unrest among the people. All their speeches were fill of communal poison. It was not necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organise for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government, or of the people, no more remained for the RSS. In face opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death. Under these conditions, it became inevitable for the Government to take action against the RSS…Since then over six months have elapsed. We had hoped that after this lapse of time, with full and proper consideration, the RSS persons would come to the right path. But from the reports that come to me, it is evident that attempts to put fresh life into their same old activities are afoot."

"RSS was explicitly influenced by European fascist movements, its leading politicians regularly praised Hitler and Mussolini in the late 1930s and 1940s."

"“When I read today all the subversive, communal propaganda the media attributes to RSS shakhas, I am frankly baffled. My memories of what happened at our shakha between 6 and 7 p.m. each weekday evening are completely different—we marched about in our khaki shorts, did some yoga, worked out in a traditional outdoor gymnasium with no fancy equipment, sang songs and chanted Sanskrit verses that we did not understand the meanings of, played games and had a bunch of fun with our fellows.”.... “The whole thing was overseen by a team of mostly-well-meaning—if not always inspirational—adults, who truly believed they were helping raise good ‘civilian soldiers’— boys respectful of authority, well-behaved in the presence of adults and well-aware of the importance of physical fitness— who would put their efforts into nation-building when they grew up.”"

"It should be obvious to anybody that the most vicious anti-RSS propaganda is at heart anti Hindu propaganda. So long as the RSS is identified with Hinduism in one form or another, it would invite this attack.... But while the enemies of the RSS have worked themselves up to a frenzied point and have whipped up their tirade, the propaganda itself is losing its appeal with the thinking people...."

"Little did he know that it was easier to get freedom from colonial slavery than from the Zamindar. Before independence, most of the country lived in villages, inhabited by poor, landless farmers who were ruled by the exploitative Zamindars or Jagirdars. The Zamindars gave these landless farmers ploughs and seeds, made them till the land like bulls, and in return gave them a pittance of the crop. This was also the time when there were famines, droughts and India was starving due to food shortage. In this background, these Zamindars were central to the exploitative enterprise. The village was his universe. He would charge lagaan as per his whims and fancies. He raped women at will. His kothi represented the exploitation of the farmer. The mystery around him, his moustache, his pagdi, his servants and his lathi made him an icon of terror. He was evil. He loved to see a hungry farmer. His heart would fill with joy when a farmer put his izzat– pagdi– at his feet. He loved the sound of the whip slashing the skin off a starving farmer’s back. He could do all this because he was the owner of the land. And that’s the only commodity that God doesn’t make anymore. He owned God’s most in-demand and rare creation – land. Thus, he was God."

"The might and influence of these Zamindars, in independent India’s socio-economic fabric, was unchallenged as they were infusing their illegal money into the coffers of politics. No wonder then that most of the cultivable land at that time was owned by just five percent of the people – the Zamindars."

"Every young boy and girl detested the Zamindar for exploiting his father, uncles, and brothers. For molesting or raping his sister, mother or neighbour’s daughter. This young boy grew up with angst. And it was this angst that became the fodder for the Naxal movement."

"With politicians and police on his side, the only hurdle to this Zamindar was this bourgeois, idealistic youth, influenced by the doctrines of Mao Zedong who led a peasant army to bring about a successful revolution. The void created by the State was slowly getting occupied by the youth. This idealistic youth had to rise. He had to protest. He had to fight. Then, one fine morning, in Naxalbari, a group of hungry and exploited peasants, armed with crude weapons rose to fight for what was rightfully theirs – the land and the crop. They attacked landlords, seized granaries and stole paddy, burnt all land records and forcibly took the land. And gave it back to the landless peasant. An uprising had begun. Illegal. And unconstitutional."

"Today’s Naxalism isn’t limited to Zamindars or class struggle. In recent years, many other issues have added up which have aggravated the already worsening Naxalism. Issues like farmer suicide, informalization of the formal sector and contractualization of the industrial workforce, rising prices and soaring unemployment, development-induced displacements that include the creation of SEZs, EPZs, IT Parks and industrial hubs, environmental degradation etc., apart from gender and caste-based violence, have given Naxals more avenues to wage their war against the Indian State."

"I am utterly confused and tired. Everything is becoming clinical. I remember in 1985, a Leftist friend of mine had tried explaining the Naxal organizational structure to me, and finally exasperated, he’d said, ‘Trying to understand the Naxal movement is like peeling an onion. In the end, you will have only tears in your eyes and many disconnected and scattered layers of the onion.’"

"Recent studies say that the Naxals have well-established linkages with other insurgent groups and a few Muslim Fundamentalist Organizations (MFOs), which are actively involved in India. These links provide the movement not only with psychological support but also material support in the form of money and weapons."

"Naxalite spokespersons, on many occasions, have openly supported the actions and cause of the J&K terrorist groups. The Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) terrorists who carried out the attack on the American Centre at Kolkata in 2001 had escaped to Jharkhand and taken refuge in a Naxalite sympathizer’s house in Ranchi. In return for this and similar other favours the J&K terrorists who are well trained in handling sophisticated arms, impart training to the Naxalite groups. Intelligence agencies have also reported linkages between Maoist elements and the insurgent groups of the North-East i.e. the United Liberation Front of Asom, Nationalist Council of Nagaland, and People’s Liberation Army (ULFA, NSCN, PLA). North-East insurgent groups like the PLA and NSCN follow the Maoist ideology and were even trained and supported by China in the 1960s and 1970s."

"It has emerged that the Naxals have openly supported the activities of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and both have been lately collaborating with each other. Naxalite groups in India have tried to sustain their fraternal and logistic links with Nepal’s Naxals. The outfits of India, along with Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), have decided to work towards carving out a ‘Compact Revolutionary Zone’. The Indian groups have been extending moral, material, and training support to CPN (Maoist) cadres in guerrilla warfare, which has resulted in significant growth of Naxal violence since 2001. Cooperation between Naxals active in Nepal through Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, up to Andhra Pradesh, has provided the left extremists contiguous areas to operate, move, hide, and train. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been very active in Nepal and Bangladesh for long, especially along the borders, in their desire to encircle India and is giving support to numerous Indian militant groups based in Bangladesh. The ISI does not hesitate in providing moral and material support to these groups. This bond has been mutually beneficial to both the parties, as the left-wing extremists receive weapons from the ISI to be used against the Indian State."

"Linkage with Left-Wing Philippines Groups. A few media and intelligence reports from Southeast Asia state that the Naxalites in India have also developed links with the left-wing extremists of the Philippines, and through them, with other groups of Southeast Asia. The increasing expansion of Naxalism got further strengthened with covert support from other groups with a similar ideology in the Indian subcontinent. India’s ‘all weather adversary’ Pakistan has grasped the opportunity provided by Naxalism to further increase unrest in India and re-emphasize its dictum of ‘bleeding India by thousand cuts’."

"The US State Department's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism has found that going by the number of terror attacks and the number of killings of innocent citizens every year from 2012 until now, the big-five terror group consists of the IS, Taliban, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, and the Communist Party of India (Maoist)."

"In an interview in 2007, Ganapathy, the Secretary-General of CPI-Naxals asserted, ‘We see the Islamic upsurge as a progressive anti-imperialist force in the contemporary world. It is wrong to describe the struggle that is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya as Islamic fundamentalism. Our party supports the Islamic upsurge.’ Commenting on the 26/11 massacre of Mumbai, Bimal, Politburo member, was quoted in Hindustan Times, saying: ‘We do not support the way they attacked the Victoria station, where most of the victims were Muslims. At the same time, we feel the Islamic upsurge should not be opposed as it is basically anti-US and anti-imperialist in nature. We, therefore, want it to grow.’"

"That day I learnt that in the big fat world of Bollywood, the problem isn’t whether the pyramid should be inverted or not. The problem is there isn’t any pyramid. ... In Bollywood, stars don't support small, meaningful cinema. They are more inclined to support a leave-your-brains-at-home kind of cinema, if only it can be called cinema. ... There is a mindset in Bollywood that doesn't let Indic ideas flourish."

"Sadly, Bollywood doesn’t invest in R&D. That’s why most of our films have no insights to offer. As a result, small, independent films have become the R&D lab for the Indian film industry. These films have to do an extraordinary research, for their only strength is transporting the audience to another universe, where they can feel and relate with the characters, their concerns, and their behaviour. In the mainstream films, the world is unreal, devoid of any real human concern, and the characters are like caricatures. Hence, this kind of cinema ends up becoming ‘Escapist Cinema’. Like a circus."

"The Sadhu lynching happened a couple of weeks ago; still no one said a word. It happened in Maharashtra where most of these celebrities reside…Bollywood anyway is a derived name from Hollywood. It is a shame they [Bollywood celebrities] continue to live in a bubble and never fail to jump on the bandwagon, which can give them two minutes of fame, but ‘white people’ must drive the bandwagon. Perhaps, it is because of their pre-independence colonial slavery genes. ... Even for environmental issues, you see them fight for a white teenage kid but so many incredible elderly women and even children. They are doing exceptionally well in India on environmental matters without any help or support. Some of them were honoured with the Padma Shri award. I was amazed to see their stories, but they never get the same acknowledgement from the industry. Perhaps, sadhus or tribal people aren’t fancy enough for the Bollywood crowd or their followers."

"[Marathi film actress Asha Kale] was popular in Marathi films and known for her extremely "sojwal" (i.e. saintly, goody-goody, suffering doormat, weepy) roles. In this rally, Asha Kale addressed the crowd and revealed her extreme repugnance to injustice and to the very saintliness she was compelled to play in films. She pointed out that often when she played these extremely "sojwal" roles, she actually felt very humiliated and depressed at having to depict "saintly" women who encouraged abuse and injustice by tolerating it in a doormat manner, and (or so she claimed) actually shed tears over this after returning home from the day's shoot."

"The "Amar-Akbar-Anthony" brand of film propaganda has always been an indispensable feature of our Film industry. It has served to highlight this "composite" culture, by presenting stereotypes of blatantly West-Asianized Muslims and blatantly Europeanized Christians, insisting all the time on the "Indianness" of these stereotypes…. The entertainment media have played no mean role in carrying on this brand of propaganda. The calculated glorification of Urdu, of Lucknow tehzib, of the Mughals, of gazals and qawwalis, etc., and the subtle ridicule of Sanskritized Hindi, has been a basic feature of the Hindi film industry…"

"So many independent-film-crusaders have turned mainstream-bollywood-flunkies now. These are the same people who used to rant 24/7 about the “system” for attention before they were given entry into the pearly gates of mainstream Bollywood. #Hypocrisy much?"

"Kashmiri Files KILLED BOLLYWOOD. The MONSTROUS SUCCESS of KF (Kashmir Files) will permanently change BOLLYWOOD in the following ways: 1. It will start making a lot of serious films on serious issues. 2. It will start focusing on content and not on stars, budgets and extravaganza. 3. It will start making films with actors rather than stars. 4. It will henceforth not depend on songs to make a hit film. 5. It will finally show its face with pride to world cinema instead of being apologetic about the Indian audience. 6. Its top 6 or 7 production houses and makers will cease to be at the top and will lose their control because Kashmir Files has proved that anyone can come out of anywhere to sit at the top which is the ultimate democratisation of cinema. 7. More than anything else it will start taking the audience seriously and not anymore presume them to be mindless dumbos who will only see masala films .” “I want to sum up by saying that Bollywood will be permanently divided into 2 eras as pre #KashmiriFiles Bollywood and post #KashmiriFiles Bollywood. I want to touch the feet of @Vivekagnihotri and the entire team of #KashmiriFiles for BREAKING the foundations of BOLLYWOOD so as to BUILD A BRAND NEW BOLLYWOOD.”"

"“For the first time in my entire career, I am reviewing a film”. Ram also said, "Kashmir Files released and broke every rule in the book. It doesn't have stars. There is no intention in the director to impress the audience which is what every filmmaker will be trying to do. He wants to impress." He added that from now onwards when any director or filmmaker plans any new film 'they can't help but study and refer back to Kashmir Files'. At the end of the video, he concluded, "I hate Kashmir Files because it destroyed whatever I learned, whatever I thought was right and whatever I thought was in at multiple times. I can't go back and I can't reinvent myself and can't rethink now, 'Oh, this is how it should be made'. No, can't. So I hate Kashmir Files whether it is the director or acting style or it is the way the screenplay was made...I hate all of them because you guys made me and all of the filmmakers I would say lose our identity...I hate all the people associated with Kasmir files but I love Vivek Agnihotri for making this happen." Sharing his review on Twitter, he wrote, “Don’t take at face value that mainstream Bollywood, Tollywood, etc are ignoring the mega success of #kashmirifiles. The reality is they are taking it more seriously than the audiences, but their silence is because they are s*** scared. Watch my review.” He also added, ".@vivekagnihotri single-handedly (footedly) kicked on the following myths a**** 1. Only big stars can get people into theatres, 2. Only mega budgets can get people into theatres, 3. Only #KapilSharmaShow can get people into theatres, 4. Only super hit songs can get people into theatres.""

"The school Where round their Guru, in a grave half-moon, The Sâkya children sang their s through, And learned the greater and the lesser gods."

"I am familiar with the traditions of this institution... If we examine the millennia-old gurukul tradition, we will find that most of those who became immortal [through their great actions] in history received their sanskars from the gurukul system. This tradition had so much samarthya (capability) because it did not just provide book knowledge, livelihood skills or merely train people to acquire degrees. This tradition taught human beings to become humane. This institution cultivates in men the capability to rise from being mere men to becoming divine (nar se narayan). This institution has cultivated an atmosphere that inculcates the sanskar of rising above aham (self-hood) towards vyam (ourness), whereby people are transformed from being self-centred to being inherently society oriented, and inclucate sanskars (values) of collectivity to widen people’s perspective towards life. This great tradition teaches students to honour their gurus; it cultivates shraddha towards sanskriti (culture) and the desire to dedicate one’s life to doing good, whereby there is constant inspiration to sacrifice all one has for achieving excellence. This institution carries out a nirantar (never ending) yagya for crafting such a lifestyle."

"India has more animal species than any other region of equal area in the world."

"“Then, the presence of zebu genes and representations in Asia and Europe seem to be a promising ground of research, and certainly a confirmation that there was an important movement from South Asia to the West. It is difficult to think that this movement was only of cattle without herders, particularly where we find strong archaeological and historical signs of a common culture. (…) Actually, scholars have always thought of Indo-Europeans as the people of the horse and searched for horses in order to find Indo-Europeans. But they were also, and I would say more, the people of the cow”."

"The Biblical desacrilization of nature and the instrumentalization of other creatures in the service of mankind are alleged to be the doctrinal underpinnings of the massive destruction of wildlife and species diversity in the last two centuries… Stone Age peoples… have exterminated many species… Remark the contrast with India, where in spite of the immensely higher and denser population, no species mentioned in the Vedas had died out in the intervening millenia."

"As far back as the 3rd or 4th millennium B.C. and probably much earlier still, India was in possession of a highly developed civilization with large and populous cities."

"So in India some three to seven thousand years ago there were peoples possessing a technology sufficiently advanced to support a dense population."

"So putting the evidence from archaeology, literature, and history together, we reach the conclusion that before the Christian era India had a substantial population, first because of its advanced technology and second because of the fertile environment of the application of this technology."

"Although no data as such are available for the ancient times, there are statements of Greek writers which depict India as a country of large population. Apollodorus writes that there were between Hydaspes (Jhelum) and Hyphasis (Beas)—approximately the kingdom of Porus—1500 cities, none of which was less than a kos, which, adds Elphinstone, ‘with every allowance for exaggeration, supposes a most flourishing territory‘."

"The population of the country as a whole did not greatly vary between the early Hindu period and the first advent of Muhammadans, and it may be supposed to have lain roughly between the above limit (100—140 million)."

"The population was very much greater (on the eve of Turkish invasions) than at the death of Akbar. During centuries of invasions, constant oppression and misrule, the wholesale massacres during the Pathan period, the population of India dwindled...This broad fact emerges from the two estimates (Ferishtah’s and Moreland’s), howsoever erroneous or full of fallacies the individual estimates may be."

"Although there were mass conversions, the country was too vast, the invaders too few, and the volume of immigration too small to change the social complex… India, therefore, never became a Muslim nation, but remained simply a Hindu country in which Muslims were numerous."

"All the people..are idolaters . There is not a single Musalman. Occasionally a Musalman may visit the country... but the natives are all infidels."

"Therefore, wherever Muslims made successful inroads, they reduced the Hindu population directly by slaughtering the men in large numbers and taking away the women and children as captives. It indirectly reduced the Hindu populace by rendering the remnant Hindu men unprocreative by depriving them of childbearing female partners. Since those women became the vehicle for breeding Muslim offspring instead, the final result was a reduction of the Hindu populace and a sharp rise in the number of Muslims. The growing Muslim population was to be maintained by the toiling of the vanquished Hindus, subjected to grinding taxes. This is roughly the same protocol, which Prophet Muhammad had applied to the Jews of Banu Qurayza and Khaybar."

"Of the whole population of Hindustan... five parts in six are composed of Hindus..."

"In short, while there can be no doubt about the presence of some Muslims in Sind, Gujarat and on the western coast of India, their number, till the end of the tenth century was almost microscopic. In Hindustan proper, east of the river Indus, there were hardly any Musalmans in A.D. 1000."

"It has been estimated earlier that there were about four hundred thousand Muslims in India in A.D. 1200. If their numbers became double in sixty to seventy years, they would have been about 3.2 million in 1400. The total population of India in 1400 has been estimated at 170 million. The Muslims would have been about 1.8 per cent of the total population with 50 to 53 Hindus to one Muslim."

"We have, therefore, only one choice left to arrive at a tentative percentage of Muslims in A.D. 1600... by 1600 Muslim numbers may not have risen beyond 15 million. In that year the total population of India has been estimated at 140 millions. Muslims would have formed about one-ninth to one-tenth of India’s total population."

"Even under Mohammedan rule, India remained largely a pagan land."

"In the whole of India the proportion of Hindus to the total population has fallen in 30 years from 74 to 69 percent, but this is partly due to the inclusion at each succeeding Census of new areas in which Hindus, if they are found at all, are a minority. Bengal contributes 24 millions or 36 per cent to the total number of Muhammadans in India. They are found chiefly in the Eastern and Northern Districts. In this tract there was a vigorious and highly successful propaganda in the days of the Pathan Kings of Bengal. The inhabitants had never been fully Hinduised, and at the time of the first Muhamadan invasions most of them probably professed a debased form of Buddhism. They were spurned by the high class Hindus as unclean and so listened readily to the preachings of the Mullahs who proclaimed that all men are equal in the sight of Allah, backed as it often was by a varying amount of compulsion. "Another less notable exception is found in Malabar, where the Mappillas are the descendants of local converts, the earliest of whom were made by the Arabs who began to frequent the coast in the 8th century. A certain number of new converts are still being made." "It should be added that even in Northern India the Muhammadan population is by no means wholly of foreign origin. Of the 12 million followers of Islam in the Punjab, 10 millions showed by the caste entry (such as Rajputs, Jat, Arain, Gujar, Mochi, Turkhan, and Teli) that they were originally Hindus. The number who described themselves as belonging to foreign races such as Pathan, Biloch, Sheikh, Saiyad and Moghal was less than 2 millions, and some even of these have very little foreign blood in their veins.” "The number of Muhammadans has risen during the decade by 6.7% as compared with only 5% in the case of Hindus. There is a small but continuous accession of converts from Hinduism and other religions, but the main reason for the relatively more rapid growth of the followers of the Prophet is that they are more prolific. This may possibly be due to their more nourishing dietery, but the main reason is that their social customs are more favour able to a high birth rate them those of The Hindus. They have fewer marriage restrictions, early marriage is uncommon and widows remarry more freely. "The greater reproductive capacity of the Muhammadans is shown by the fact that the proportion of married females to the total number of females aged 15- 40 exceeds corresponding proportion for Hindus. The result is that Muhammadans have 37 childrens aged 0—5 to every person aged 15—40 while the Hindus have only 33. Since 1881 the number of Muhammadans in the areas then enumerated has risen by 26.4 per cent while the corresponding increase for Hindus is only 15. 1 per cent." Writing on the comparative increase of the two communities in Burmah the census report proceeds in para 173:— "We have seen that in Burmah the Hindu settlers have a tendency to become absorbed in the Buddhist population around them, but this is not so with the Muhammadans. There are scattered communities of Muhammadans who have been settled in Burmah for several generations and still retain their faith unimpaired. When a Muhammadan marries a Burmese wife he brings up his children in his own religion. The offsprings of these mixed marriages are known as Zerbadis."

"In six decades (1881-1941)… at no census have the Muslims failed to improve their percentage and the Hindus failed to lose…” [It is due not only to the] “proportion of Muslim women married, but those who are married also have a higher fertility.”"

"The population of India in the present day is over three hundred millions, and every sixth man is a Muslim. Nine hundred years ago there were no Mohammedans east of the Indus..."

"However, the seed of the debate on the differential population growth rates of the Hindus and Muslims was planted in the undivided India itself. Kingsley Davis, an eminent demographer, was one of the first to raise a debate on the Hindu-Muslim population growth rates in the sub- continent. In his famous book “The Population of India and Pakistan” (1951), he presented before the world the fact that Muslim fertility was higher than the Hindu fertility. For instance, the decline in the proportion of the Hindus from 75.1 per cent to 72.9 per cent in between the censuses of 1881 and 1901 (Davis, 1951) created strong reaction and fear among the Hindus that the Muslims would become the majority population in India in the future. Numerous research and review studies have been done on this area since then. But there seems to be no end to this highly debated topic and it still remains a very popular area for research studies among the research scholars and population scientists."

"It was in February 1912, while standing in the spacious hall of the Arya Samaj in Calcutta, that a Bengali gentleman, dressed in European habits, was introduced as Colonel U. Mukerji of the I. M. S. to me. His dress at first prejudiced me against him, but when he spoke to me of the pamphlet on which he was engaged and worked out mathematically how within the next 420 years the Indo-Aryan race would be wiped off the face of the earth unless steps were taken to save it. I learnt to respect his patriotism and resolved mentally that I would never be led away by mere appearance in judging of the worth of a man in future."

"In Scrafton, for example, the Muslim population consists of foreign conquerors as opposed to native Indians, and it is broken down into Arabs, Pathans, Afghans, Mongol Tartars, and Persians, plus slaves. There is no recognition of indigenous Muslims other than "slaves," and the numbers are hugely underrated: The Moors are not "the hundredth part of the natives". Rural Bengal's millions of Muslims are not yet visible."

"Ever since 1951, "the propor­tion of Mus­lims has been gradually but steadily increa­sing every decade by roughly one percentage point"­."

"Some commentators have drawn attention to the divergent courses of the fertility rates in the two parts of Bengal. In Indian West Bengal, which is three quarters Hindu, the fertility rate is 2.07, below the re- placement level. The contrast with Muslim Bangladesh, where the transition has been blocked, is striking. A shared language should have led to a convergence through cultural contagion, but a pietistic Islam seems to have frozen changes in patterns of thought in Bangladesh and, as a repercussion, provoked a halt to the transition. But a consideration of educational patterns leads to a rejection of the hypothesis of a direct effect of the religious variable on fertility."

"The Pakistani fertility rate is slowly declining: In 1988 it was at 5.56 children, and since then it has lost only 0.9 percent annually. With 4.6 children in 2005, 6 the Pakistani fertility rate, the highest in this group, is far above that of the Arab world, except for Yemen. One cannot fail to be impressed by the alignment of the fertility of the Muslims of northern India with that of Pakistan: In 1998 –1999, it was 4.8 in Uttar Pradesh, 4.9 in Rajasthan, and 4 in Bihar. One might suggest a slight boost from the combined effect of minority status and the fact that Muslims in these states belong to the least privileged strata in social and educational terms. The minority effect must play the leading role, because elsewhere in India, in states where Muslims enjoy higher than average educational status, in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, they also have a higher fertility rate than their Hindu neighbors."

"The Muslim population of the Indian subcontinent would reach 820 million by 2050 against 1200 million non-Muslims. Equal numbers with and even bypassing of the non-Muslim would be possible by century’s end."

"Of­ficial census data show that the Hindu per­centage has decli­ned, and the Muslim percentage increas­ed, in every single successive census in British India, free India, Pakistan and Bangl­adesh... Ever since regular census operations were started, the per­centage of Muslims has grown every decade in British India, in­dependent India, Pakis­tan and Banglade­sh... The Muslim percentage has not only incre­ased, but the rate of increase itself has increased... The one general prediction to which the data cer­tainly compel us, is that the Muslim percentage will be increas­ing at an ac­celerating rate for at least another generation; and also beyond that, unless the present generation of young adult Muslims brings it procreati­on rate down to the average Indian level...So, every decade the Muslim per­cent­age in the Subcon­tinent incre­ases by more than 1%, with the rate of incre­ase itself incr­eas­ing. In India, the rate of incre­ase in the Muslim per­centage is considerable, though lower than the subcontinental total, but is rising faster due to the differential in the use of birth control and the incre­asing Muslim immigration... And why stop our conclusion with finding the Hindu position right? The data just surveyed also teach us something about the secularists who have ridiculed and thoroughly blackened the said Hindu position: they are wrong. We have not used any esoteric figures inaccessible to the common man; all these data were at the disposal of the secularists. Yet, some of them insist that the Muslim percentage will remain constant, or that the Muslim incre­ase is proportionate to relative Muslim poverty. The fact deserves to be noted: a whole class of leading intellec­tuals brutal­ly denies easily verifiable facts, i.c. the accelerating increase of the Muslim and the decrease of the Hindu per­centage..."

"When you consider the population trends in the Indian Subcontinent, it seems inevitable that Muslims will make up 50% of its population in less than eighty years. Extrapolating the trends within India, it will be less than fifty years until the Muslims are again 24% of the population, the percentage which in the forties was enough to enforce Partition. Add to that the millions- strong illegal Muslim immigration into India, which will only accelerate as population pressure increases in Pakistan and Bangla Desh. So, the majority status of the Hindus is by no means guaranteed. Moreover, the so- called minority is in fact the Indian department of a world-wide movement, from which it effectively gets moral and financial support."

"In fact, the migration figures are the best refutation of the "Hindu bully, Muslim victim" myth: as against the constant trickle of Hindu refugees out of Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is no Muslim flight out of India, but on the contrary a massive Muslim influx into India."

"Immigration from Bangladesh is of two types. Firstly there are members of the minority communities fleeing occasional waves of per­secution or the more general sense of being second-class citiz­ens under the Islamic dispensation. Few Hindus would disput­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­e their right to settle down in India. Secondly, there are Mus­lims seek­ing econom­­ic oppor­tunities or sheer living space, which dirt-poor and inten­sely overc­rowded Banglad­esh cannot offer to the ever-larger num­bers of newcomers on the hous­ing and labour market... The BJP argues that refugees from persecution and illegal economic migrants merit a different treat­ment, as is assumed in the arrangements for refugee relief of most countries... Terminology is a part of the problem here, with secularists systematically describing Hindu refugees as "migrants" if not "infiltrators", and Muslim illegal immigrants as "refugees"."

"The Hindu population in East Bengal had declined from 33% in 1901 to 28% in 1941. It fell to 22% by 1951 due to the Partition and the post-Partition exodus, and to 18.5% in 1961. By 1971, it had fallen to 13.5%, partly due to the 1971 massacre by the Pakistani Army, partly due to intermittent waves of emigrati­on. The 1981 figure was 12.1%. In 1989 and 1990, due to "large-scale destru­ction, desecration and damage inflic­ted on Hindu temples and religious institutions", "clandestine migrat­ion­­­ by the Hindus to India went up"."

"Contrary to the noise in several quarters, careful analyses of the data show that minorities are not just protected but indeed thriving in India. This is particularly remarkable given the wider context within the South Asian neighbourhood where the share of the majority religious denomination has increased and minority populations have shrunk alarmingly across countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Afghanistan... By way of illustration, India is one of the few countries that has a legal definition of minorities and provides constitutionally protected rights for them. The outcomes of these progressive policies and inclusive institutions are reflected in the growing number of minority populations within India."

"In Asia, a prominent example of immigration-driven ethnic change is taking place in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam. A Hindu-majority tongue of Indian territory lying north of Muslim Bangladesh, Assam has long been host to large-scale illegal, but peaceful, Bengali immigration. Bengali Muslims grew 30 to 50 percent over the period 1971 to 1991. They now constitute more than 30 percent of Assam’s population and are believed to control the electoral verdict in 60 of Assam’s 126 Assembly constituencies. Numerous battles have taken place over whether large numbers of Muslims have the legal status necessary to add their name to the electoral rolls. Muslim growth has been the catalyst for ugly Assamese attacks against unarmed Bengali workers since the 1980s, and an Assamese political movement demands the deportation of illegal immigrants. This conflict is regional, but on the wider Indian level, the growth of the Muslim population through higher fertility and an often exaggerated degree of illegal immigration has been a red flag for Hindu nationalism. The Muslim population’s fertility advantage over Hindus was 10 percent at partition in 1947, but is now 25–35 percent. Only a fraction of this gap can be explained by relative Muslim poverty. Muslims grew from roughly 8 percent of the Indian total in 1947 to 14 percent today, and are projected to rise to 17 percent by 2050. These are not staggering numbers, yet have proven useful tinder for Hindu nationalists and sparked sporadic violent reprisals against Indian Muslims."

"At first glance, Muslims seem more resistant to family planning than others. Research on Muslim fertility in India, for instance, concludes that Indian Muslims have been more reluctant to adopt contraception and family planning than Hindus or Christians, despite equal access. Muslims tend to have an especially large fertility advantage when they are in the minority. In Europe, India, Thailand, Russia, China and the Philippines, the Muslim fertility advantage is greatest. This is particularly true of zones of conflict like Israel–Palestine. One could argue that minorities in general, not merely Muslim ones, tend to have higher fertility rates than majorities. Yet in Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslims outbirth most Hindu, Christian and Chinese minorities, while in the Arab world, Muslim fertility is higher than that of the minority Christians and Druze."

"Any law against population control will be a conspiracy against Muslims... The rise in the country’s population is due to Dalits and tribals and not because of Muslims."

"In reading the genetics literature on South Asia, it is very clear that many of the studies actually start out with some assumptions that are clearly problematic, if not in some cases completely untenable. Perhaps the single most serious problem concerns the assumption, which many studies actually start with as a basic premise, that the Indo-Aryan invasions are a well-established (pre)historical reality. The studies confirm such invasions in large part because they actually assume them to begin with."

"[T]he present-day linguistic affinities of different Indian populations per se are perhaps among the most ambiguous and even potentially controversial lines of evidence in the reconstruction of prehistoric demographic processes in India."

"Most genetic studies are built on unstated, unproven (and often unwitting) assumptions: not only that migration is the supreme mechanism to account for the spread of genes and languages, but also that, in India’s case, the said genes could only have spread unidirectionally. The studies then proceed to marshal evidence to ‘prove’ the assumption, in a classic case of circularity."

"South Asia has indeed been at the crossroads for much of modern human prehistory."

"Confusing language movements with demographic movements was a childhood disease of Indo-European linguistics before 1945. Especially after Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), race thinking came to dominate the Humanities. There were warnings from Indo-Europeanists, including the much-maligned Friedrich Max Müller, to maintain the distinction, but the public and many professionals started speaking of “the Aryan race”, not in the vague sense common earlier (race = any group of hereditary belonging, from family to nation and race to humanity, Sanskrit jāti), but in the biological sense. After 1945, this went completely out of fashion in the West, but in India, not encumbered with the guilt about Nazi racism, time has stood still."

"Nothing in the osteometric data shows that relationships existed between the populations of the Oxus Civilization and those of the steppes: these populations are separate, different. This would prove that if there were migrations, they were not significant at that time. Mixtures of steppe and oasis populations do not become significant until the time when corpses disappear through cremation or exposure."

"Unfortunately, genetic studies sometimes draw conclusions about language, which is entirely incorrect. Genetics addresses the history of a population’s formation, including migration to new regions, mixing with other populations, and the processes involved—but nothing beyond that... A similar situation arises in palaeogenetics, where study results indicate that the population of the Indian subcontinent formed from neighboring substrates, yet the conclusions still incorporate the steppe homeland hypothesis. This notion may have delayed a successful resolution of the problem for many decades. It is necessary to establish a framework in which archaeological, palaeogenetic, and linguistic data do not contradict one another, as occurs with the Steppe theory. Since this is primarily a linguistic problem, the starting point should be language."

"Only 5% of the Y chromosomes of the R1a-Z93 subtype that occurs at 100% frequency in the steppe population are present in the Swat Valley population. Therefore, it is assumed that women were incorporated there. But if we assume that this population was responsible for 30% of the Indian population, a possible proportion of steppe genes decreases to 6-7% and the proportion of male chromosomes become infinitesimal... However, with such a low male contribution, even for the population of the Swat Valley, language change is doubtful, so it is an almost unbelievable proposition for India... [A]gainst the background of the lack of archaeological and genetic data on mass migration to the region with a high population density, it is more logical to assume that the ancestors of the North Indians lived somewhere close to South Asia."

"The data provide no support for any model of massive migration and gene flow between the oases of Bactria and the Indus Valley. Rather, patterns of phenetic affinity best conform to a pattern of long-standing, but low-level bidirectional mutual exchange."

"As for the question of biological continuity within the Indus Valley, two discontinuities appear to exist. The first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC [with another discontinuity] at some point after 800 BC but before 200 BC. In the intervening period, [the data] reveals clear indications of interaction with the West and specifically with the Iranian Plateau."

"Overall percentages [of steppe ancestry] are generally very low, and in South Asia also too late for a plausible first arrival of Indic languages here (let alone Indo-Iranic as a whole). But however small and late, and however implausible that they replaced all languages from Iran right across to northern India, that is what has to be claimed for these weak signals, for the Steppe hypothesis to be right."

"[The ancient Harappans] are not markedly different in their skeletal biology from the present-day inhabitants of Northwestern India and Pakistan... Of the Aryans, we must defer to literary and linguistic scholars in whose province lies the determination of the arrival and nature of the linguistic phenomenon we call the Aryans. . . . But archaeological evidence of Aryan-speaking peoples is questionable and the skeletal evidence is nil."

"In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the northwestern sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture... All prehistoric human remains recovered thus far from the Indian subcontinent are phenotypically identifiable as ancient South Asians... How could one recognize an Aryan, living or dead, when the biological criteria for Aryanness are non-existent?"

"For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find the highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as 51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe."

"So, in the migration scenario females with steppe-related ancestry move down across the [Indus] by the end of the bronze age and this leads to the formulation of the “patriarchal-steppe-warrior-chariot” bronze age hymns somehow in iron age India? And Iranians ... somehow manage to compose the Avesta before the Iranians migrate to western Iran and somehow the Medes and Persians separate around 1000 BCE. Also, by some miracle, the Mitanni reached West Asia around 1760 BCE. This is simply impossible."

"The anthropologists who have recently described the skeletons from Harappa remark that there, as at Lothal, the population would appear, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable to the present day."

"Genetic variation in contemporary South Asian populations follows a northwest to southeast decreasing cline of shared West Eurasian ancestry."

"Sayce, therefore, pertinently wrote that the discovery of the Harappan seals ‘is likely to revolutionize our ideas of the age and origin of Indian civilization’."

"“The Indus writing is a mixed one in the sense that pictures of birds, scorpion, dog, goat, pipal leaf, grassy plant, bee, ant, three-peaked hill, horn of animal and a few schematized pictures like ‘man’, ‘fish’, ‘hand’ and ‘fence’ appear side by side with cursive signs, some of which bear resemblance to Brâhmî and Roman characters. Besides true pictures and cursive signs, there are some linear signs and ‘pseudo-pictures’. The latter look like pictures but are, in reality, compound signs formed by joining two or more cursive signs. Quite often, short lines (diacritics) are attached to pseudo-pictures and sometimes two identical basic cursive signs are joined to form a compound sign. These and other pseudo-pictures are often mistaken by decipherers for pictures of ‘archer’, ‘bowman’, ‘soldier holding shield’, ‘coolie carrying load’ or ‘praying man’, but they are compound signs. When analyzed, the components are found to be basic signs which appear independently in other inscriptions. Two or three basic signs are intelligently joined to form picture-like samyukta aksara-s (conjunct consonants) and syllables. When phonetic value is given, the words formed by them are meaningful.”"

"[the Indus script is] “the artistic version of Brahmi”."

"[N.K. Verma's] “discovery of Indus Valley script amongst the Santhals of Bihar-Bengal border, after an uninterrupted gap of three thousand and five hundred years time span and at a geographical distance of 2500 miles. (...) He solved this riddle by learning the unique symbols with sound-value which are used by the Santhals of Sahibganj area during their religious rites. (...) Controversy may arise on the point of accuracy or correctness of what Verma has deciphered in the symbols that have been used by the Santhals of Sahibganj. But none is to controvert the fact that the Santhals of the 20th century AD have been scrupulously using the scripts of the 16th century BC independently.”"

"In the Harappan cities some 4200 seals, many of them duplicates, have been found which carry short inscriptions in an otherwise unknown script. There is not the slightest doubt that this harvest of Harappan writings is but the tip of an iceberg, in this sense that the Harappan culture must have produced much more copious writings, but that most of them disappeared because the writing materials were not resistant to the ravages of time, particularly in the Indian climate. This fatality can still be seen today, when the libraries of many impoverished maharajas' castles are full of manuscripts which are decaying under our very eyes, turning large chunks of India's national memory and heritage into dust. Even of the oldest and most popular texts, the extant manuscripts are seldom older than a few centuries, copies made as the only guarantee to save the texts from the ravages of time which were destroying the earlier copies. It is fair to assume that a text corpus proportionate in size to the enormous extent of the Harappan cultural space, has gone the same way into oblivion."

"Prof. Asko Parpola's well-known decipherment of the Indus script as proto-Dravidian doesn't prove its own starting-point, and may turn out to be no more than an imaginative though admittedly masterly groping in the dark."

"“My analysis of Indus and Brahmi based on computer-created concordances, revealed obvious connections between the two scripts that could not be explained as arising out of chance. Such an analysis is possible since letters in a script occur with different probabilities. (...) My analysis showed that the most frequent letters of Indus and Brahmi looked almost identical, and besides they were in the same order of frequency.(...) Briefly the connections between Indus and Brahmi scripts are as follows. Both scripts use conjuncts where signs are combined to represent compound vowels. The core set of most frequent Indus signs seems to have survived without much change in shape into Brahmi where it corresponds to the most frequent sounds of Sanskrit. The writing of numerals in Indus, especially the signs for 5 and 10, appears to have carried over to Brahmi.”"

"[it would be] “unwise to exclude the possibility of a form of ‘Proto-Indoaryan’ language as being enciphered in the Indus inscriptions”... [earlier scholars had] “advocated a continuity between the Indus and Brahmi scripts”... “many of the Indus signs are very closely similar to Brahmi signs”...[Surveying Prof. B.B. Lal’s study of inscriptions on pottery and megaliths] “89% of the Megalithic signs and symbols which appear on pottery down to the 9th century BC or thereabouts may be traced to Harappan and post-Harappan signs and symbols”. Since “the period dealt with spans virtually the entire millennium between the downfall of the Indus Civilization (c. 19th century BC) and the rise of the later Gangetic civilization (c.9th century BC)”, a “direct continuity between the two is thereby implied; and this is suggested also by the many signs and symbols which recur between the Indus seals and the later punch-marked coinage”. .... [Several other findings confirm this continuity. As Mitchiner notes, it had been observed soon after the discovery of the Indus cities that the signs on the Indus seals] “show virtually no evolution whatever throughout the centuries of their usage in the Indus civilization”, while “from the inception of the punch-marked coinage around 600 BC down to its later form around AD 300 -- nearly a millennium later -- there is a remarkable lack of evolution or change” [(that fabled or notorious conservative trait in the Hindu character), so that] “it would seem reasonably likely that these signs and symbols which recur between the Indus and later Indian civilizations demonstrate a further continuity of culture between the two”. [Moreover, Indian seals from around the turn of the Christian era, bearing inscriptions in Brahmi script, present the same types and visual make-up as those from the Harappan period:] “Such later seals frequently portray an animal-figure, above which appears the inscriptional legend -- just as in the case of the Indus seals. Two main types of seal- impressions may be found: one was attached to parcels and letters, and shows stringmarks at the back; while the other was used more as a kind of token, and generally has a hole at the back by which it may be suspended. Once again, precisely the same two types are to be found among Indus seals.”. ... [From various angles, Mitchiner tries to decipher specific items in the Harappan seal corpus. His conclusion:] “We have now reached a stage where it is possible to conclude that the language of the Indus inscriptions may very well be an early form of Indo-Aryan. In this event, it can be seen [from our analysis of sign-groups] that certain forms of this language have been preserved only in the Prakrit branch of Indo-Aryan -- notably those which predominate in the inscriptions at Mohenjo Daro; while certain other forms have been preserved only in the Sanskrit branch of Indo-Aryan -- notably those which predominate in the inscriptions at Harappa.(...) In the first place, we have concluded that the inscriptions contain the names of towns and regions, both within and beyond the Indus Valley: such names denoting the places from which and to which certain items of merchandise are being conveyed. In the second place, we have concluded that the language used in the inscriptions is an early form of Indo-Aryan.”"

"While preferring the dominant view on the Semitic origin of Brāhmī, the epigraphist Richard Salomon was prudent enough to point out that ‘some historical connection between the Indus Valley script and Brāhmī cannot decisively be ruled out’."

"It may not be illogical to think that the Indus writing tradition lingered on in perishable medium till the dictates of the new socio-economic contexts of early historic India led to its resurgence in a changed form."

"The ancient [Indus] writing . . . may have ultimately developed into the Brāhmī alphabet several centuries before the rise of the Mauryas in the latter half of the four century BC."

"Much of the narrative heritage of India and Greece goes back to shared ancestral narratives told in early IE times – to ‘protonarratives’. (…) the Greek tradition quite often fuses or amalgamates traditions that were separate in the protonarrative and remain separate in the Sanskrit."

"In parts of their careers, Arjuna and Odysseus show similarities so numerous and detailed that they must be cognate figures, sharing an origin in the proto-hero of an oral proto-narrative."

"Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859) in comparing the ancient Greeks with the ancient Hindus, says: "Their (Hindus) general learning was more considerable; and in the knowledge of the being and nature of God, they were already in possession of a light which was but faintly perceived even by the loftiest intellects in the best days of Athens.""

"Journeys to India and indebtedness to Brahminical wisdom are now ascribed to numerous founders and leaders in Greek thought, such as Plato, Democritus, Pherecydes of Cyrus and, quite often, Pythagoras. We hear that Pythagoras studied astronomy andastrology with the Chaldeans, and psychological as well as soteriological doctrines with the Indian gymnosophists."

"The mythology, as well as the cosmogony of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, were borrowed from the doctrines of the Brahmins."

"There are reports by writers of the Hellenistic and Roman periods that Greeks had visited India in much earlier times... In fact Plutarch, Diodoros Sikeliotes and Diogenes Laertios manage between them to send just about every Greek sage into the East (including Pythagoras and Democritos, but notably not Socrates and Aristotle)."

"Plato, through the Pythagoreans and also the Orphics, was subjected to the influence of Hindu thought but he may not have been aware of it as coming from India."

"It will no longer remain to be doubted that the priests of Egypt and the sages of Greece have drawn directly from the original well of India; that only Brahmanism can provide those fragments of their teaching which have come down to us with the clarity which they do not possess."

"‘These coincidences of thought,’ says A.N. Marlow who documents many more, ‘each small in itself, amount to quite a formidable total. As to the…way by which Indian influence reached Greece, I have no new solution to offer and fall back with others on Persia as the intermediary. The problem is, however, that the influences can be seen centuries earlier’"

"Everything is narrow in the Occident. Greece is small — I stifle. Judea is dry — I pant. Let me look a little towards lofty Asia, towards the deep Orient. There I find my immense poem, vast as India’s seas, blessed and made golden by the sun, a book of divine harmony in which nothing jars. There reigns a lovable peace, and even in the midst of battle, an infinite softness, an unbounded fraternity extending to all that lives, a bottomless and shoreless ocean of love, piety, clemency. I have found what I was looking for: the bible of kindness. Great poem, receive me!… Let me plunge into it! It is the sea of milk."

"The West spoke fairly enough, talking of honor, the sanctity of the given word, and of promises; of freedom and enlightenment. It vaunted its poets, its philosophers, Its scientists, Its classical inheritance from that beautiful, far off Greece, whose greatest philosophers, it forgot to mention, had been inspired through Egypt and Persia, by India."

"So, in practice, Western history has used two standards of evidence for transmission: one ultra-lax standard of evidence for transmission from "Greeks", and another ultra-strict standard for transmission to the West. For cases of alleged transmission from the Greeks, mere speculations—a speculative chronology combined with speculative attribution—are regarded as ample evidence of transmission. In the other direction, similarity with a real earlier work, by a real author, together with a clear channel of transmission, do not prove anything, for there is always the possibility of repeated miracles by which any number of people in the West may independently reinvent things just when they could be transmitted."

"In the many centuries, since Toledo, that Western historians have been talking of transmission from the Greeks, who ever produced a Sanskrit manuscript of Ptolemy? Who ever proved that Aryabhata had seen such a Sanskrit manuscript? Yet every Western reference work on the subject asserts that Indian astronomy is transmitted from the Greeks. ... So, it is not so much that the standards of evidence have changed, but that there are (even as of today) two simultaneous standards of evidence for transmission. One for transmission to the West, and another for purported transmission from the West. Not only is the judge biased, the very rules of evidence are biased!... So, similarity and precedence do not always establish transmission. Whether or not they establish transmission depends upon the direction of transfer. Thus, in practice, there are two standards of evidence for transmission: an ultra-lax standard for transmission from Greeks, and an ultra-strict standard for transmission to the West."

"A hundred facts testify to how great an extent the East was mingled with Hellenic thought during the second century of our era."

"There is no language in the world, even Greek, which has the clarity and the philosophical precision of Sanskrit. India is not only at the origin of everything, she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison."

"Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans, the idealism of reason, as it is set forth by Greek philosophers, appears, in comparison with the abundant light and vigour of Oriental idealism, like a feeble Promethean spark in the full flood of heavenly glory of the noonday sun—faltering and feeble, and ever ready to be extinguished."

"We find among the Indians the vestiges of the most remote antiquity... We know that all peoples came there to draw the elements of their knowledge... India, in her splendour, gave religions and laws to all the other peoples; Egypt and Greece owed to her both their fables and their wisdom."

"The Greek sought political liberty. The Hindu has always sought spiritual liberty. Both are one-sided."

"Two curious nations there have been - sprung of the same race, but placed in different circumstances and environments, working put the problems of life each in its own particular way. I mean the ancient Hindu and the ancient Greek. The Indian Aryan - bounded on the north by the snow-caps of the Himalayas, with fresh-water rivers like rolling oceans surrounding him in the plains, with eternal forests which, to him, seemed to be the end of the world - turned his vision inward; and given the natural instinct, the superfine brain of the Aryan, with this sublime scenery surrounding him, the natural result was that he became introspective. The analysis of his own mind was the great theme of the Indo-Aryan. With the Greek, on the other hand, who arrived at a part of the earth which was more beautiful than sublime, the beautiful islands of the Grecian Archipelago, nature all around him generous yet simple - his mind naturally went outside. It wanted to analyse the external world. And as a result we find that from India have sprung all the analytical sciences, and from Greece all the sciences of generalization. The Hindu mind went on in its own direction and produced the most marvellous results. Even at the present day, the logical capacity of the Hindus, and the tremendous power which the Indian brain still possesses, is beyond compare. ...Today the ancient Greek is meeting the ancient Hindu on the soil of India."

"Two nations of yore, namely the Greek and the Aryan placed in different environments and circumstances - the former, surrounded by all that was beautiful, sweet, and tempting in nature, with an invigorating climate, and the latter, surrounded on every side by all that was sublime, and born and nurtured in a climate which did not allow of much physical exercise - developed two peculiar and different ideals of civilization. The study of the Greeks was the outer infinite, while that of the Aryans was the inner infinite; one studied the macrocosm, and the other the microcosm. Each had its distinct part to play in the civilisation of the world. Not that one was required to borrow from the other, but if they compared notes both would be the gainers. The Aryans were by nature an analytical race. In the sciences of mathematics and grammar wonderful fruits were gained, and by the analysis of mind the full tree was developed. In Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and the Egyptian neo-Platonists, we can find traces of Indian thought."

"The Greeks, in their mythology, were merely disciples of India and of Egypt."

"Our nations have mutually destroyed each other on that very soil where we went to collect nothing but money, and where the first Greeks travelled for nothing but knowledge."

"It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmans' science not been been long established in Europe."

"We have already acknowledged that arithmetic, geometry, astronomy were taught among the Brahmans. From time immemorial they have known the precession of the equinoxes and were in their calculation far closer to the real figure than the Greeks who came much later. Mr. Le Gentil (a French astronomer who spent several years in India) has with admiration acknowledged the Brahmans' science, as well as the immensity of time these Indians must have needed to reach a knowledge of which even the Chinese never had any notion, and which was unknown to Egypt and to Chaldea, the teacher of Egypt."

"I like to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times."

"Joseph Waligore is equally critical but has no solution except that they did borrow ‘from Indian philosophy but only had limited contact with the Indians and could not penetrate the core of Indian thought’."

"“in parts of their careers, Arjuna and Odysseus show similarities so numerous and detailed that they must be cognate figures, sharing an origin in the proto-hero of an oral proto-narrative. (…) Either the proto-journey was like the Greek and contained nothing relating to yoga, in which case the yogic aspect of the Sanskrit story was an innovation that developed in the Indian branch of the tradition. Or the proto journey was like the Sanskrit and was quasi-yogic or proto-yogic in character, in which case Greek epic tradition largely or wholly eliminated that aspect of the story. I shall argue for the second scenario, claiming both that the proto-narrative shared certain features with yoga and that the telling of such a story makes it likely that there already existed ritual practices ancestral to yoga. (…) I argue that some significant and fairly precisely identifiable features of yoga go back to the culture of those who told the proto-narrative (…) may well have been proto-Indo-European speakers.” ... “it is a priori quite likely that the account of the proto-hero's journey served as a myth explaining and justifying ritual practices ancestral to yoga as we know it.”"

"As the ground is seldom tilled otherwise than by compulsion… the whole country is badly cultivated, and a great part rendered unproductive… The peasant cannot avoid asking himself this question: Why should I toil for a tyrant who may come tomorrow and lay his rapacious hands upon all I possess and value… without leaving me the means (even) to drag my own miserable existence? - The Timariots (Timurids), Governors and Revenue contractors, on their part reason in this manner: Why should the neglected state of this land create uneasiness in our minds, and why should we expend our own money and time to render it fruitful? We may be deprived of it in a single moment… Let us draw from the soil all the money we can, though the peasant should starve or abscond…"

"No artisan can be expected to give his mind to his calling in the midst of a people who are either wretchedly poor, or who, if rich, assume an appearance of poverty, and who regard not the beauty and excellence but the cheapness of an article; a people whose grandeess pay for a work of art considerably under its value and according to their own caprice… For it should not be inferred that the workman is held in esteem, or arrives at a stage of independence. Nothing but sheer necessity or blows from a cudgel keeps him employed; he never can become rich, and he feels it no trifling matter if he have the means of satisfying the cravings of hunger and of covering his body with the coarsest garment. If money be gained it does not in any measure go into his pocket, but only serves to increase the wealth of the merchant."

"…grandees pay for a work of art considerably under its value, and according to their own caprice. … When an Omrah or Mansabdar requires the services of an artisan, he sends to the bazar for him, employing force, if necessary, to make the poor man work; and after the task is finished, the unfeeling lord pays, not according to the value- of the labour, but agreeably to his own standard of fair remuneration; the artisan having reason to congratulate himself if the Korrah has not been given in part payment."

"Notwithstanding the institution of castes, there is no country where men rise with more ease from the lowest rank to the highest. The first nabob (now king) of Oude, was a petty merchant; the first peishwa, a village accountant; the ancestors of Holcar were goatherds; and those of Scindia, slaves. All these, and many other instances, took place within the last century. Promotions from among the common people to all the ranks of civil and military employment, short of sovereignty, are of daily occurrence under native states, and this keeps up the spirit of the people, and in that respect partially supplies the place of popular institutions. The free intercourse of the different ranks also keeps up a sort of circulation and diffusion of such knowledge and such sentiments as exist in the society. Under us, on the contrary, the community is divided into two perfectly distinct and dissimilar bodies, of which the one is torpid and inactive, while all the sense and power seems concentrated in the other…"

"There are around 35,000 sanitation workers in Mumbai. Of these, some 28,000 are and 7,000 are hired on contract. Permanent sanitation workers have their basic working conditions protected by law. They are provided with uniforms, payment slips, medical insurance, and paid leave. Contract workers have none of these benefits. As migrants, they do not have ration cards or permanent housing either. Most of them live in unauthorised shanties that are frequently demolished, which forces them to periodically search for a new spot to build their homes again. It is not uncommon for the work of permanent employees to also be subdivided among contract workers. After years of persistent ground-level organising, the movement has come closer to the abolition of the system of subcontracting, which has made sanitation work one of the most dangerous, precarious, and dehumanising jobs in India today."

"All of the contract workers employed by the are Dalits, who are migrants. [...] Several sanitation workers [...] are forced to leave their homes in rural areas in search of work because of drought conditions, which are becoming worse each year. The two main areas they come from are in Maharashtra, and Salem and in Tamil Nadu. They are often landless, or unable to make a living from the small plots of land they own. [...] The wages for contract workers are barely enough to survive on, and many of them are malnourished. They collect garbage with their bare hands, without hand gloves, facemasks, shoes, or a uniform. There are no facilities at the work stations for employees to wash their bodies. [...] The workers suffer from various illnesses because of the poor working conditions and often die at a young age. Tuberculosis and other lung diseases are common due to the kinds of gases they are exposed to and the conditions they work in. There are frequent accidents."

"The situation in the Mughal Empire is summed up by W.H. Moreland like this: "...These instances appear to justify the conclusion that early in the seventeenth century foreigners could secure capable servants for somewhere about three rupees a month. ... The rates struck Europeans as extraordinarily low, and taken with these which prevailed in the northern capital they enable us to understand the great development of domestic employment which ... characterised the life of India at this period."

"[In the seventeenth century John De Laet (1631) summarised the information he had collected from English, Dutch and Portuguese sources regarding the Mughal empire as a whole.] “The condition of the common people in these regions (south and west) is exceedingly miserable; wages are low; workmen get only one regular meal a day, the houses are wretched and practically unfurnished, and people have not got sufficient covering to keep warm in winter.”"

"The 40-day lockdown was further extended at a time of sporadic expressions of resistance and anger by migrant workers in a few cities. Extreme precarity doesn’t have a singular expression. While some are responding with anger, others are responding with resignation. The severe distress among is not entirely by chance."

"The migrant worker distress has also exposed the inherent fractures of the “one nation” narrative that is one of the unique selling propositions of the BJP government. While it goes against the grain of the idea of India that has a rich tradition of pluralism, it is also meaningless from a governance standpoint. Migrant workers don’t carry their ration cards and so haven’t been able to avail of government rations in the states where they are stranded. The employers, s mostly, have largely abandoned them without paying them wages. Consequently, they are left to scrounge for food and are left without money. In many cases, they are stranded without knowing the local language. [...] However, the richer states have neither extended any financial support nor forced employers to pay wages to the workers. Worse still, on May 5, , , cancelled trains for migrant workers from Bengaluru to their home states. [...] This was not only insensitive but a violation of the right to live with dignity (Article 21), right to freedom of movement (Article 19) and prohibition of forced labour (Article 23). The government decided to restore the train services only after protests."

"Barring examples from Kerala and , most host states have demonstrated disregard for migrant workers. It behoves the host states to care about the migrant workers not only from a humanitarian standpoint but also from the perspective of the health of the economy. On its part, the central government has maintained a calibrated silence regarding this. Monopolising decisions and socialising losses are not what federalism is supposed to mean. Therefore, it is time that the poorer states realise that the unilateral lockdown is not just an assault on the dignity of the poor, but also an economic assault on the poorer state governments. Further, there has been a concerted effort by the central government and some host states to hold the labour captive in the richer states by making transportation procedures unreasonable."

"Trade unions do not consider workers from smaller units as workers in the formal sense, or they often cannot access workers inside special industrial zones, behind walls of security. Workers, too, sometimes do not accept the unions even as they find themselves vulnerable. But if they find their existence is under threat, they will come out and protest. [...] Workers' issues get space if things turn violent. Here, for instance, if the women workers had simply come out of the factories and sat on a , they would not have got so much television coverage."

"On November 20, the issued a notification allowing women to work night shifts (7 p.m. to 6 a.m.) in all factories registered under the Factories Act, 1948. [...] In principle, this is a welcome move. However, several concerns have been voiced by women garment workers who are estimated to constitute over 90% of the five lakh garment workers in Karnataka (according to data by Asia Floor Wage Alliance, a global coalition of trade unions). The amendment suggests that night shifts for women will only be allowed if the employer ensures adequate safeguards concerning occupational safety and health, protection of dignity and honour, and transportation from the factory premises to points nearest to the worker’s residence. The amendment stipulates 24 points related to occupational rules and regulations, most of which have been in existence for years. Yet, women workers fear that when there is no safety or dignity in the workplace, even during daytime, how will employers ensure all this during night shifts?"

"In a sector where there is systemic failure and worker-management relations are turbulent, putting the onus of worker safety and security in the hands of management alone can be risky. Moreover, it is well-known that in supply chains, the brands call the shots. Involving them in discussions on worker dignity and equality is important. Omitting workers and trade unions from discussions about the amendment is also seen by the workers as a short-sighted measure. Women garment workers are concerned that while the amendment has stipulated many ‘new’ guidelines amidst the plethora of unaddressed concerns, allowing night shifts would only extend daytime exploitation."

"There are a variety of occupations, mostly informal, which involve acute social contact and are still running full swing around us. Consider, for instance, auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers, staff in private buses, barbers, janitorial staff, lift operators, traders in wholesale markets, street food vendors, construction workers, loading and unloading workers, sex workers, garment factory workers, and so on. For these workers, social distancing is contradictory to the very nature of the job. Wishing to keep a ‘safe distance’ from people by staying at home would mean losing income, perhaps the job altogether. There are three key dimensions involved – health, income and employment. It is possible for some, such as tech workers, to take health precautions (social distancing), receive income as paid and still be able to retain their jobs. The experiences in informal employment are mixed. Some, such as s or home-based workers, may be able to stay at home and lose income, but with some marginal assurance of retaining their jobs. Others may go out and earn, retaining their jobs but risking their health. While tech workers and other white-collar professionals enjoy a ‘win-all’ with health, income and employment, there are large swathes within the informal workforce who face a ‘lose-all’ on all three fronts."

"Today, a pandemic. Tomorrow, a natural disaster, a chemical spill or some . There’s always some disruption around the corner. So, for as long as informal jobs are the norm in our economy and as long as we cannot practically lockdown the entire country, the way ahead is to install measures to improve social security. State and society cannot throw up their hands in helplessness or stay blind to variations in vulnerability among informal workers. It must facilitate s through dialogues in policy, academia and other spheres. There is no single solution, especially not just direct monetary transfers. [...] Social distancing is impractical for the tens of millions without social security."

"The utter subjection and poverty of the common people-poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe. ... There are three classes of people who are indeed nominally free, but whose status differs very little from voluntary slavery-workmen, peons or servants and shopkeepers. For the workmen there are two scourges, the first of which is low wages. Goldsmiths, painters (of cloth or chintz), embroiderers, carpet makers, cotton or silk weavers, black-smiths, copper-smiths, tailors, masons, builders, stone-cutters, a hundred crafts in all-any of these working from morning to night can earn only 5 or 6 tackas (tankahs), that is 4 or 5 strivers in wages. The second (scourge) is (the oppression of) the Governor, the nobles, the Diwan, the Kotwal, the Bakshi, and other royal officers. If any of these wants a workman, the man is not asked if he is willing to come, but is seized in the house or in the street, well beaten if he should dare to raise any objection, and in the evening paid half his wages, or nothing at all. From these facts the nature of their food can be easily inferred… For their monotonous daily food they have nothing but a little khichri… in the day time, they munch a little parched pulse or other grain, which they say suffices for their lean stomachs… Their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking… Their bedclothes are scanty, merely a sheet or perhaps two… this is sufficient in the hot weather, but the bitter cold nights are miserable indeed, and they try to keep warm over little cowdung fires… the smoke from these fires all over the city is so great that the eyes run, and the throat seems to be choked."

"The vast majority of India’s poor rely on daily for sustenance. With the current lockdown and its likely extension, millions of daily labourers and their families can no longer earn the money they need to survive. In this unprecedented situation, the Indian state must respond swiftly to prevent widespread acute hunger. [...] The health and economic threats posed by the pandemic are unprecedented: India must capitalise upon its preparedness to address food insecurity and prioritise food distribution to protect the health and welfare of its most vulnerable citizens."

"The abrogation of labour laws in -ruled states (which could not have been done without Modi’s approval) is meant to make the more insecure rather than less."

"There should be left only so much to the Hindus that neither, on the one hand, they should become arrogant on account of their wealth, nor, on the other, desert their lands in despair."

"Migrant workers, dismissed by employers, enjoying no protection from their governments, often thrown out of their accommodation by their landlords, in urgent need of food, transport and money, driven by desperation to walk home. It is a scene many have described as reminiscent of the migration at Partition. This is the outcome of the largest and one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, enforced during the coronavirus disease crisis — a lockdown that has been widely applauded internationally. Why has the outcry against this suffering inflicted on men and women, who are more than 90% of India’s workforce, been so muted? It is, I believe, in part at least, because those in a position to raise their voices have not identified themselves with those who are suffering."

"The mechanic or artificer will work only to the measure of his necessities. He dreads to be distinguished. If he becomes too noted for having acquired a little more money than others of his craft, that will be taken from him. If conspicuous for the excellence of his skill, he is seized upon by some person in authority, and obliged to work for him night and day, on much harder terms than his usual labour acquired when at liberty. Hence all emulation is destroyed; and all the luxury of an Asiatick empire has not been able to counteract by its propensity to magnificence and splendour, the dispiriting effects of that fear which reigns throughout, and without which a despotick power would reign no more."

"India seems to have lost that urge to consistently relate to injustice as an assault on democracy. Be it the plight of migrants or minorities, their failure to strike a wider chord tells truths about us. [...] There was no public outcry over this human tragedy, and the victims themselves chose to mostly suffer in silence. They may have grumbled or cursed under their breath, but our democracy does not seem to have encouraged them to really assert or demand their rights. Not just migrants, minorities too have been subjected to the untold misery of being excluded from the idea of the public. And more routinely, women, rural poor, Dalits and Adivasis have been objects of humiliation."

"It was an anti-imperialist cry... Vande Mataram had gripped me, and when I first heard it sung, it enthralled me. I associated the purest national spirit with it... Its chosen stanzas are Bengal's gift ... to the whole nation ."

"The supreme service of Bankim [Chandra Chatterji] to his nation was that he gave us the vision of our Mother.... It is not till the Motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind as something more than a stretch of earth or a mass of individuals, it is not till she takes shape as a great Divine and Maternal Power in a form of beauty that can dominate the mind and seize the heart that ... the patriotism that works miracles and saves a doomed nation is born... It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang Bande Mataram. The Mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself."

"We used the Mantra Bande Mataram with all our heart and soul, and so long as we used and lived it, relied upon its strength to overbear all difficulties, we prospered. But suddenly the faith and the courage failed us, the cry of the Mantra began to sink and as it rang feebly, the strength began to fade out of the country. It was God, who made it fade out and falter, for it had done its work. A greater Mantra than Bande Mataram has to come. Bankim was not the ultimate seer of Indian awakening. He gave only the term of the initial and public worship, not the formula and the ritual of the inner secret upasana [worship]. For the greatest Mantras are those which are uttered within, and which the seer whispers or gives in dream or vision to his disciples. When the ultimate Mantra is practised even by two or three, then the closed Hand of God will begin to open; when the upasana is numerously followed the closed Hand will open absolutely."

"Bande Mataram, apart from its wonderful associations, expresses the one national wish—the rise of India to her full height. And I should prefer Bande Mataram to Bharat Mata-ki-jai, as it would be a graceful recognition of the intellectual and emotional superiority of Bengal."

"And Bose's tragedy came to serve this turncoat (Nehru) in yet another context. He hated India's hallowed national battle-cry, Vande Mataram. It was couched in Sanskrit which he had never understood and never honoured. But worst of all, it offended the Muslims whom he wanted to please and pit against "Hindu communalism". So, while the name of Netaji was still stirring the people, he pleaded that Vande Mataram should be replaced by Jai Hind, a cocktail phrase hurriedly coined by the Azad Hind leaders in the heat of an emergency. I myself heard him, in several crowded meetings, asking his audience to shout Jai Hind more loudly than they had done. He himself gave the lead by raising his voice to the highest pitch. I also heard him singing qadam qadam baDhâyê jâ, the marching song of the Azad Hind Fauj, and expressing dissatisfaction when people failed to repeat the refrain in the right tune. He suffered from no qualms in fattening himself on the fame of a "fascist"."

"A most telling instance in point is the one relating to Vande Mataram. That celebrated song first appeared in the historical novel Ananda Math of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. It was a hymn of love of motherland sublimated into an ecstatic devotion to the Divine Mother-Bharat. In that exalted vision was manifest the trinity of Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge and cuiture), Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth and beauty) and Durga (the goddess of strength and energy). When Bengal was partitioned in 1905, Vande Mataram became the battlesong of the entire nation. Congress too, thereafter, adopted it as the national anthem and it was Rabindranath Tagore who sang it for the first time in the Congress session. To the British imperialist the very utterance of that simple expression Vande Mataram became the proverbial red rag to the bull. The Lt. Governor of East Bengal had ordained that no one should utter that word ; it was a ‘crime’. Thousands of young men had mocked that order and braved the British lathis and boots in the streets of Barisal by their thunderous roar of Vande Mataram. They had shed their blood and sanctfied that word into a potent and holy Rashtra-Mantra. It soon became the joyful and inspiring chant playing on the lips of the literate as well as the illiterate, the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, the old and the young—in fact of one and all-men, women and children. Hundreds of revolutionary heroes ascended the gallows with that final obeisance to the Mother. Gandhiji would often extol the grandeur of that song. At Comilla, in 1927, he said that the song held up before one’s mind the picture of the whole of Bharat-one and indivisible. Those two simple words had, indeed, wrought a miracle which even thousands of speeches and articles could not have achieved. It had become the cry of the awakened and resurgent national soul."

"“First of all it has to be remembered that no formal national anthem has been adopted by the Congress at any time. It is true, however, that the Bande Mataram song has been intimately associated with Indian nationalism for more than thirty years and numerous associations of sentiment and sacrifice have gathered round it,” Nehru informed, according to the Congress and the Muslims. “We have recognised that in the rest of the song there is ideology, imagery, allegory, etc., which people of various groups cannot put up with. Remember, we are thinking in terms of a national song for all India. Therefore if there is an ideology which various groups in India cannot honestly and sincerely accept, then, it is an improper ideology for a national song,” Nehru argued further fuelling the objections raised by the Islamists. “I, for myself, cannot really enthuse over an ideology, Hindu or Muslim. As soon as the ideology comes. I forget Bande Mataram. People’s mind is diverted to other thoughts and it introduces a sense of confusion in their minds, since their attention is diverted to allegories, phraseologies and ideologies which do not suit other people,” he boasted. He stated, “The Congress has not officially adopted any song as a kind of national anthem. In practice however the Bande Mataram is often used in national gatherings together with other songs. The reason for this is that 30 years ago this song and this cry became a criminal offence and developed into a challenge to British imperialism.” “It contains too many difficult words which people do not understand and the ideas it contains are also out of keeping with modem notions of nationalism and progress,” Nehru contended to justify his absurd statement and added, “We should certainly try to have more suitable national songs in simple language.” “I suppose in time we shall get something good. Meanwhile, there is no reason why we should not give full permission for the use of the Bande Mataram as well as other favoured songs which many people have come to associate with our struggle for freedom,” he concluded."

"“Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore once said that Bankim Chandra’s ‘Anandmath’ is not just a novel. It is a dream of an independent India. Every word written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, not Bankim Babu, had deep meaning. This song was created during the time of slavery, but it is not limited to that time… The Vande Bharat song is relevant in every era. It has attained immortality. One-fourth share of global GDP was held by India just a few centuries ago,” he said. “In 1875, when Bankim Babu published ‘Vande Mataram’ in ‘Bang Darshan’, some people thought it was just a song. But in no time, ‘Vande Mataram’ became the voice of India’s freedom struggle. A voice that was on the tongue of every revolutionary, a voice that expressed the emotions of every Indian! When freedom fighters like Veer Savarkar, living outside Bharat, met each other, their greeting was always Vande Mataram. Many revolutionaries, even while standing on the gallows, said Vande Mataram,” the PM added. “For those who consider the nation as a geopolitical entity, the idea of viewing the nation as a mother might seem surprising. But India is different; in India, the mother is both the creator and the nurturer. And if a crisis befalls the child, the mother becomes the “destroyer” as well. Our Vedas have taught us that the nation is our mother and we are her children… We have worshipped our nation in this form since the Vedic period… The notion that a nation can be a mother can be surprising for those who view nations as geopolitical entities. But India is different. Here, a nation is also the one that gives birth and nurtures… She is also a destroyer if a child is in danger… Because of this emotion of considering the nation as mother and a form of Shakti, mahila shakti was forefront in building the nation…” the PM stated."

"During my 2014 fact-finding trip to Assam, locals frequently impressed on me how they believe the influx of “infiltrators” from Bangladesh is not only changing Assam’s culture, ecology, and demographics; they also are building support for radical Islam inside the state. I have been tracking the demographic change in West Bengal for almost a decade and have seen village after village on the border with Bangladesh, formerly with robust Hindu and Muslim populations, become entirely Muslim, the Hindu population having been forced to leave. The growth of Islamism in West Bengal through the influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is well-documented."

"With the steep fall in the numerical strength of the religious minorities, there is, however, a qualitative change in the causes of migration. Riots and killings have yielded place to other means of oppression. Minorities today find that they are seldom able to protect their faith, property and women. Reports of forced marriages and conversions have been pouring in. With the Muslim population growing at a faster rate, there is a rising pressure on land and minority properties are the obvious targets. Even temple lands are not being spared. Certain iniquitous laws in force like the Vested Properties Act and the enemy Properties Act are handy weapons to deprive the minorities of their properties."

"The infiltrators are not only by minorities of Bangladesh but also from the majority community Muslims. In absolute terms, the number of Muslims crossing into India is likely to much larger than that of non-Muslims."

"There is a direct correlation between the rise of fundamentalism and increase in influx."

"The story of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is one of the most tragic episodes in recent history. Once inhabited by tribals, this beautiful land has been substantially captured by the Muslims. Between 1979 and 1984 the Government settled about 4 lakh Muslims in the CHT area. [... it] led to clashes and protracted armed resistance by the major tribal group - the Chakmas. In this explosive situation, the regime sought a military solution and thousands of refugees crossed over to India. In 1974, there were 5.08 lakh people in the CHT area. .... The threats to the ethnic identity and culture as well as their land were evident."

"It would be interesting to note that a group of intellectuals in Dacca is seeking to legitimize the migration of Muslims into the adjoining areas of North East region by invoking the theory of Lebensraum or living space."

"The influx in cetain cases, has changed the demographic character .... Its serious religious and cultural dimensions are being increasingly felt in the states of West Bengal, Tripura and Bihar.... The simmering communal tension in some of the border areas is one of the manifestations of the effects of large scale illegal migration of Bangladeshi nationals who have slowly displaced or dispossessed the local population, particularly those belonging to the Hindu community, in these areas."

"The Hindu immigrants have been generally staying in shanties in miserable conditions.... The Muslim infiltrators have fanned out to urban areas in other states most notably in Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra etc. In the metropolitan cities of Delhi and Bombay not less than 4 to 5 lakh Bangladeshi Muslims have been residing."

"Following large-scale destruction on Hindu temples and religious institutions for four days between 30.10.90 and 2.11.90 ... clandestine migration by the Hindus to India went up."

"In recent years, the pattern of illegal immigration from Bangladesh has changed in that Muslims have been infiltrating in large numbers. In fact, Muslim infiltrators... now far outnumber the Hindu immigrants."

"When Kashmiri Hindus have to flee their homes after reading open threats in the Urdu papers and seeing relatives butchered, they are called "migrants"; but when Bangladeshi Muslims terrorize their Hindu neighbours and then migrate from their Islamic state to India in search of job opportunities, they are called "refugees". This type of inversion of word meanings is part of a wider mind-set of mendaciousness expressed through more ordinary lies, often of breathtaking effrontery."

"Immigration from Bangladesh is of two types. Firstly there are members of the minority communities fleeing occasional waves of per­secution or the more general sense of being second-class citiz­ens under the Islamic dispensation. Few Hindus would disput­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­e their right to settle down in India. Secondly, there are Mus­lims seek­ing econom­­ic oppor­tunities or sheer living space, which dirt-poor and inten­sely overc­rowded Banglad­esh cannot offer to the ever-larger num­bers of newcomers on the hous­ing and labour market... The BJP argues that refugees from persecution and illegal economic migrants merit a different treat­ment, as is assumed in the arrangements for refugee relief of most countries... Terminology is a part of the problem here, with secularists systematically describing Hindu refugees as "migrants" if not "infiltrators", and Muslim illegal immigrants as "refugees"."

"The Hindu population in East Bengal had declined from 33% in 1901 to 28% in 1941. It fell to 22% by 1951 due to the Partition and the post-Partition exodus, and to 18.5% in 1961. By 1971, it had fallen to 13.5%, partly due to the 1971 massacre by the Pakistani Army, partly due to intermittent waves of emigrati­on. The 1981 figure was 12.1%. In 1989 and 1990, due to "large-scale destru­ction, desecration and damage inflic­ted on Hindu temples and religious institutions", "clandestine migrat­ion­­­ by the Hindus to India went up"."

"Unlike the BJP, the Congre­ss (I) views both Hindus and Muslim from Bangladesh as in­filtrat­ors."

"This country is not a dharamshala that anyone can come and settle down here."

"Setubandha means bridge of the ocean. It is the dike of Rama, the son of Dasaratha, which he built from the continent to the castle Lanka."

"Marco Polo... refers to... Setabund Rameshwara."

"From the mountain of gold (Meru) to (Rama's) Bridge."

"“In fact, Ram, or Rãma, was the sovereign of Ayodhya, or Audh, a city in the most ancient times of wonderful extent and magnificence, as may be inferred from the present Lucnow’s having been, according to the Brahmin accounts, only a lodge for one of its gates; that he is celebrated as a conqueror of the highest renown, and the deliverer of nations from tyrants, as well as of his consort Sita, from the giant Ravan, king of Lanca; that he was commander-in-chief of a numerous and intrepid race of those large monkeys, which some of our naturalists have denominated Indian satyrs; that the name of his general was Hanumat, the prince of satyrs; and that, by the wonderful activity of such an army, a bridge of rocks was raised over the sea, a part of which the Hindoos suppose still to remain; and he thinks it is probably that series of rocks, which, by Mussulmen and Portuguese, is mistakenly called Adam’s, for it should be Rama’s, bridge. “Might not,” subjoins Sir William, “this army of satyrs have been only a race of mountaineers, whom Rama, if such a monarch ever existed, had civilized.”"

"In many parts of the plains thorny jungles grow, behind the good defence of which the people… become stubbornly rebellious… and pay no taxes."

"The Sultan then asked, "How are Hindus designated in the law, as payers of tributes or givers of tribute? The Kazi replied, "They are called payers of tribute, and when the revenue officer demands silver from them, they should tender gold. If the officer throws dirt into their mouths, they must without reluctance open their mouths to receive it. By doing so they show their respect for the officer. The due subordination of the zimmi is exhibited in this humble payment and by this throwing of dirt in their mouths. The glorification of Islam is a duty, and contempt of the Religion is vain. God holds them in contempt, for he says, "keep them under in subjection". To keep the Hindus in abasement is especially a religious duty, because they are the most inveterate enemies of the Prophet, and because the Prophet has commanded us to slay them, plunder them, and make them captive, saying, 'Convert them to Islam or kill them, enslave them and spoil their wealth and property.'No doctor but the great doctor (Hanifa), to whose school we belong, has assented to the imposition of the jizya (poll tax) on Hindus. Doctors of other schools allow no other alternative but 'Death or Islam.'""

"But the Mogul rule could scarcely be compared with administration by the Indian Civil Service. The brilliant courts were centers of conspicuous consumption on a scale which the Sun King at Versailles might have thought excessive. Thousands of servants and hangers-on, extravagant clothes and jewels and harems and menageries, vast arrays of bodyguards, could be paid for only by the creation of a systematic plunder machine. Tax collectors, required to provide fixed sums for their masters, preyed mercilessly upon peasant and merchant alike; whatever the state of the harvest or trade, the money had to come in. There being no constitutional or other checks—apart from rebellion—upon such depredations, it was not surprising that taxation was known as “eating.” For this colossal annual tribute, the population received next to nothing. There was little improvement in communications, and no machinery for assistance in the event of famine, flood, and plague—which were, of course, fairly regular occurrences. All this makes the Ming dynasty appear benign, almost progressive, by comparison. Technically, the Mogul Empire was to decline because it became increasingly difficult to maintain itself against the Marathas in the south, the Afghanis in the north, and, finally, the East India Company. In reality, the causes of its decay were much more internal than external."

"The Hindu was taxed to the extent of half the produce of his land, and had to pay duties on all his buffaloes, goats, and other milk-cattle. The taxes were to be levied equally on rich and poor, at so much per acre, so much per animal. Any collectors or officers taking bribes were summarily dismissed and heavily punished with sticks, pincers, the rack, imprisonment and chains. The new rules were strictly carried out, so that one revenue officer would string together 20 Hindu notables and enforce payment by blows. No gold or silver, not even the betelnut, so cheering and stimulative to pleasure, was to be seen in a Hindu house, and the wives of the impoverished native officials were reduced to taking service in Muslim families. Revenue officers came to be regarded as more deadly than the plague; and to be a government clerk was disgrace worse than death, in so much that no Hindu would marry his daughter to such a man. ... [These edicts] were so strictly carried out that the chaukidars and khuts and muqad-dims were not able to ride on horseback, to find weapon, to wear fine clothes, or to indulge in betel. . .... No Hindu could hold up his head. ..... Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains were all employed to enforce payment. ""

"…The abolition of jizyah in Hindustan is a result of friendship which (Hindus) have acquired with the rulers of this land… What right have the rulers to stop exacting jizyah? Allah himself has commanded imposition of jizyah for their (infidels’) humiliation and degradation. What is required is their disgrace, and the prestige and power of Muslims. The slaughter of non-Muslims means gain for Islam…"

"The real purpose of levying jiziya on them is to humiliate them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It is intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honour and might of Islam."

"According to Mulla Ahmad, "the main object of levying of Jiziyah on them... is their humiliation... God established (the custom of realising) Jiziyah for their dishonour. The object is their humiliation and the (establishment of) prestige and dignity of the Muslims." Sri Ram Sharma reproduces Aurangzeb's order about the imposition and collection of Jiziyah dated 26th July, 1696. It says that "Jiziyah lapses on death and on acceptance of Islam"."

"In fine, the tribute you demand from the Hindus is repugnant to justice; it is equally foreign from good policy, as it must impoverish the country; moreover, it is an innovation and an infringement of the laws of Hindostan."

"Thomas Roll, the president of the English factory in Surat wrote that jizyah was exacted by Aurangzeb for the duel purpose of enriching the treasury and for ‘‘forcing the poorer sections of the population to become Muslims.’’"

"Muslim Asophs [asaf] or Lord Lieutenants . . . superintend large divisions of the country; and this greatly increased the evil; for these men, entirely sunk in indolence, voluptuousness and ignorance, confident of favour from the bigotry of their sovereign, and destitute of principle, universally took bribes to supply their wants; and the delinquencies of the Brahmans were doubled, to make good the new demands of the Asophs, over and above their former profits. Owing to this system, although the Sultan had laid on many new taxes, the actual receipts of the treasury never equaled those in the time of his father. The Amildars, under various pretexts of unavoidable emergency, reported prodigious outstanding balances; while they received, as bribes from the cultivators, a part of the deductions so made. Although the taxes actually paid by the people to government were thus much lighter than they had been in the administration of Hyder, the industrious cultivator was by no means in so good a condition, as formerly. The most frivolous pretexts were received, as sufficient cause for commencing a criminal prosecution against any person supposed to be rich; and nothing but a bribe could prevent an accused individual from ruin."

"He [Tipu] had great aversion to non-Muslims and this feeling became stronger by the ungrateful attitude of the Brahman revenue officials. After 1792, therefore, he placed the faithful Muslims in more of the important offices like the asofdaries and amildaries. Of the diwans or provincial revenue heads in 1792 only one was a Hindu. Of 65 asofs and deputy asofs in 1797–98 not one was a non-Muslim and almost all the principal mustaddis even were Muslim, whole of the 26 Mysore civil and military officers captured by the British in 1792 and demanded back by Tipu, six only were Hindus and even they were petty clerks. The communalization of offices in the Khodadad Sirkar began much earlier than 1792 but was intensified after the third Anglo–Mysore War . . . Strangely, the result was . . . the diminution of revenue . . . The officials so appointed to posts requiring deep knowledge and great patience . . . could scarcely read and write . . . the candidates were seldom chosen for any other reason than their being Mohamedans . . . he would promote a tipdar (commander of a hundred men) or a petty amildar to be a Meer Meeran (the highest military rank); and raise a risaldar to the honours of a Meer Asof (a member of the Board of Revenue) or a wretched Killedar . . . to those of a Meer Suddm (superintendent general of forts) . . . another change was the introduction of Persian as the medium of accounts in the revenue department. It was so far the practice in Mysore for the tarafdars to make out the revenue accounts in Kannada, fair copies of which were communicated to the amildars who had them translated into Marathi. Copies in both languages were kept under separate and independent officers meant as a reciprocal check . . . Tipu ordered the accounts to be submitted in Persian probably to help his Muslim officers and perhaps to Persianise [sic] Mysore . . . this change must have resulted in widening the gulf between the higher officials who were Muslims and their Hindu subordinates.21"

"Even in the Revenue Code . . . Tipu exhibited his communal tendencies. Mussulmans were exempted from paying the house-tax and taxes on grains and other goods meant for their personal use and not for trade. Christians were seized and deported to the capital, and their property confiscated. Converts to Islam were given concessions such as exemption from taxes. Special attention was given to the education of Muslim children."

"We have a brilliant inscription authored in the third regnal year of the King Parthivendradhipati Varman, which throws brilliant light on the spirit of the era and the nature of the people embodying the spirit. It was issued by the members of the Great Assembly (Mahānāḍu) of Uttaramelur- Caturvedimaṅgalam. Here is how it reads: We, the members of this Great Assembly, having received Pūrvācāraṁ from Sandiran Eḷunnūruva Nuḷamba Māyilaṭṭi for the above land, ordered it to be free from all taxes as long as the moon and sun last. We shall not show any kind of tax… against this land. We, the members of this Great Assembly, have also ordered that if any such taxes are shown against it, each person so showing, shall be liable to pay a fine of twenty-five Kaḷan̄ju of gold in the Dharmāsana or court of justice."

"However, along with these beneficial measures for the peasants, differential treatment for people of various faiths was inherently embedded in Tipu’s revenue regulations. Clause 63 of the regulations stated: ‘The Deostan [Hindu temple] lands are all to be resumed throughout your district; and after ascertaining to what simpts [sub-divisions] they formerly appertained, you shall re-annex them, and include them in the jummabundy [revenue assessment] of those simpts.’14 This meant that the grants given to the temple establishments had to be cancelled and confiscated by the government. That the Amildar was a Brahmin and had to do this to temples of his own faith would have been a hugely discomforting act for him."

"Encouraging conversion to Islam, clause 73 states: Every person who shall become a convert to the Mahomedan faith, if he be a reyut [ryot], shall only pay half the usual assessment and shall be exempted from the payment of house tax; and if he is dealer in merchandize, his goods shall pass duty-free.18"

"Till July, 2002 neither the Jan Sangharsh Manch, nor the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, nor anyone else had suggested that the Godhra incident had not happened in the manner reported by the media and as stated by the State government and others including the concerned railway personnel and the passengers..."

"The determination of the mob to cause mass killings is evident from the account of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) B.R. Simpi (Witness-25). When he reached the site of accident from Vadodara at about 11a.m., he saw a mob of about 2,000 to 2,500 persons near Ali Masjid. He testified, that they were “shouting slogans which had the effect of hurting the religious feelings of the other community,” and heard announcements like Islam khatre me hai, Maro, kato ( Islam is in danger, let us cut them up and kill them)– coming from loud speakers of the Ali Masjid. He had to order firing in order to control this aggressive mob calling for the murder of more Hindus."

"There is absolutely no evidence to show that either the Chief Minister and/or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers or Police officers had played any role in the Godhra incident or that there was any lapse on their part in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots or in the matter of not complying with the recommendations and directions given by National Human Rights Commission. There is no evidence regarding involvement of any definite religious or political organization in the conspiracy. Some individuals who had participated in the conspiracy appear to be involved in the heinous act of setting coach S/6 on fire."

"On the basis of the facts and circumstances proved by the evidence the Commission comes to the conclusion that burning of coach S/6 was a pre-planned act. In other words there was a conspiracy to burn coachS/6 of the Sabarmati Express train coming from Ayodhya and to cause harm to the Karsevaks travelling in that coach. All the acts like procuring petrol, circulating false rumour, stopping the train and entering in coach S/6 were in pursuance of the object of the conspiracy. The conspiracy hatched by these persons further appears to be a part of a larger conspiracy to create terror and destabilise the Administration."

"But from day one of its appointment, the Congress Party and its allied NGOs attacked the Commission and questioned the integrity of the appointed judge. They alleged that the Godhra incident was due to government’s failure or complicity, not a planned attack by Muslims. The Commission was reconstituted .... But even the appointment of Justice Nanavati became a target of wild aspersions by Congress-supported NGOs, even though the judge had not been arbitrarily chosen by Modi."

"My idea was to bring out whatever lapses occurred either by way of decision-making or in the implementation of orders in both these cases. That would help us learn from our mistakes. Justice Nanavati is a retired Judge of the Supreme Court. I did not handpick him but I asked the Supreme Court to suggest names. They named Nanavati because he had headed the Commission of Inquiry into the 1984 riots. I personally didn’t know Justice Nanavati. I took whatever name was suggested by the Supreme Court because I wanted this enquiry to be done through a proper judicial process. In fact, I even added in its terms of reference that all the charges against me should also be examined. If I wanted to escape scrutiny, why would I appoint a commission to probe charges against me? They had given a memorandum to the President against me. I handed over to the Nanavati Commission the entire list of charges they had listed in their memorandum. And yet, they went hammer and tongs at me."

"The policemen who were assigned the duty of travelling in the Sabarmati Express train from Dahod to Ahmedabad had not done so and for this negligent act of theirs an inquiry was held by the Government and they have been dismissed from service."

"223. Ajay Bariya in his statements recorded by the police on 4.7.2002 and J.M.F.C. Godhra on 9.7.2002 has stated that on 27-2-2002, he had gone to Godhra railway station at about 7.00 a.m. After referring to the incident of Mohmad Latika, he has stated that after the chain was pulled and the train had stopped, he had gone out of the station. Shaukat Lalu had met him there and told him to run along with them. So he had gone with them to the backside of Aman Guest House. Shaukat and others had then gone inside the room of Razak Kurkur and come out with Kerbas. He was asked to put one Kerba in the rickshaw which was standing nearby. Petrol like smell was coming from it. Thereafter others had also come there with Kerbas and they were all kept in the tempy. All of them had then got into that vehicle which after passing through Bhamaiya nala and Ali Masjid had stood near the railway track near 'A' cabin. Each one of them was asked by Shaukat Lalu to carry one Kerba with him. At that time he had come to know that the train was to be set on fire. They had run towards the train through the foot track. He himself was reluctant go with those persons but Shaukat Lalu had compelled him to go along with them. He has then described in his statement how the coaches were attacked and coach S/6 was set on fire. According to him, Shaukat Lalu and Mohmad Latika had forcibly opened the sliding door of S/6 leading to coach S/7 and entered coach S/6 through that door. Hasan Lalu had thrown a burning rag which had led to the fire in S/6."

"224. It is rightly pointed out by the Jan Sangharsh Manch that there was no prior information with the police and the authorities at Gandhinagar regarding the return journey of the Karsevaks from Ayodhya as can be gathered from the evidence of Mahobatsinh Zala (W-17), Raju Bhargav (W-31), DGP K.A. Chakravarti, Addl. DGP R.B. Shreekumar (W-995) and Ashok Narayanan, Chief Secretary, Home Department (W-994). Under the circumstances prevailing then, movements of Karsevaks was not a matter of concern. That appears to be the reason, why the police had not thought it necessary to keep itself informed about (171) their movements."

"Merely because the police was not aware about the return journey of Karsevaks from Ayodhya, it would not follow therefrom that no one had known about their return journey from Ayodhya. Anyone who wanted to know about it could have obtained that information easily. Therefore, it would not be correct to say that there was no scope for any conspiracy, as the alleged conspirators did not know that Karsevaks were going to return from Ayodhya by that train. VHP had already announced earlier its plan of taking Ramsevaks to Ayodhya for the 'Purnahuti Maha Yagna'."

"225. It is also true that some other train carrying Karsevaks going to Ayodhya had passed through Godhra railway station and the conspirators could have attacked them in pursuance of the object of the conspiracy to burn a coach carrying Ramsevaks and it was not necessary for them to wait till the morning of 27th February, 2002. Other possibilities cannot make doubtful what really has happened. Why the conspirators chose the Sabarmati Express train coming from Ayodhya and why coach S/6 thereof was made the target, was obviously the result of many factors, including what was desired by and suitable to the conspirators. Unless the conspirators who took that decision disclose the real reason, it would be a matter of drawing an inference from the surrounding facts and circumstances. It appears that the decision to put the plan into action was taken on the previous evening. On 26.2.2002 at about 9.30 p.m. the first step for procuring petrol was taken. It is likely that the conspirators had decided to burn a coach of this train as it used to pass Godhra during the night. That would have enabled them to carry out their object without being noticed and identified. It appears that because the train was running late, they had to make some changes in their plan and circulate a false rumour regarding abduction of a Ghanchi Muslim girl. That was done in order to collect large number of persons near the train and induce them to attack it, so that they get sufficient time to go near the train with petrol. It was also an (172) attempt to show that what happened was done by an angry mob because of the earlier incidents which had taken place at the station. The mob consisting of the general public would not have set coach S/6 on fire on the basis of the false rumour as their attempt in that case would have been to stop the train, search for the abducted girl and rescue her."

"226. Ranjitsinh Jodhabhai Patel and Prabhatsinh Gulabsinh Patel serving at Kalabhai's petrol pump were present at the petrol pump on 26.2.2002 at about 10.00 p.m. Both of them have stated that at about that time Rajak Kurkur and Salim Panwala had come there and told Prabhatsinh to give them about 140 litres of petrol. Petrol was filled in the carboys which were brought in a tempy rickshaw. Prabhatsinh has further stated that Jabir Binyamin, Shaukat Lalu and Salim Jarda had come in the tempy. Both these witnesses have explained in their statements why they had earlier told the police that they had not given loose petrol to any one in a carboy on 26.2.2002."

"227. On the basis of the facts and circumstances proved by the evidence the Commission comes to the conclusion that burning of coach S/6 was a pre-planned act. In other words there was a conspiracy to burn coach S/6 of the Sabarmati Express train coming from Ayodhya and to cause harm to the Karsevaks travelling in that coach."

"228. The confessions of Jabir Binyamin Behra, Shaukat alias Bhano son of Faruk Abdul Sattar and Salim alias Salman son of Yusuf Sattar Jarda have also been placed before the Commission for its consideration. Jabir Behra had made a confession before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Panchmahal District under section 164 of Cr.P.C. The confessions of Shaukat and Salim were recorded under the provisions of Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002. It was contended by the Jan (173) Sanghars Manch that the Commission should not consider the confessions of the accused as the findings that may be recorded by this Commission are likely to cause prejudice to the accused in the trial which is pending before the Sessions Court. This objection was raised at an earlier stage of inquiry and it was rejected by passing an order. …. The inquiry before by the Commission is a fact finding inquiry and therefore, the Commission can look into and consider any piece of evidence for finding out the correct facts provided it is satisfied about its correctness. (174)"

"229. Jabir Behra in his confession dated 5.2.2003 has stated that he had gone with Salim Panwala to the petrol pump of Kalabhai for bringing petrol. Though the carboys filled with petrol were kept in the guest house of Rajak Kurkur, Salim Panwala had then gone to the Station to inquire whether the train was on time or was running late. Returning there from he had informed them that the train was running late by about 4 hours. Therefore, he had gone to home. He had again gone back to Aman Guest House at about 6.00 o'clock in the morning of 27th. Along with Salim Panwala, Shaukat Lalu and others he had gone in the tempy along with carboys to a place near 'A' cabin. He has further stated that Mohmed Latika had cut the vestibule between coach S/6 and S/7 and entered the coach through that opening and he had also followed him. Both of them had then together by force opened the door of coach S/6. They had gone inside with two carboys. Shaukat Lalu had followed them and opened the door of coach on A cabin side. Through that door Imran Sheri, Rafik Batuk and Shaukat Lalu had come inside the coach with more carboys. Those carboys were thrown in the coach and immediately thereafter there was a fire in the coach. Shaukat Lalu has also in his confession dated 19.8.2003 given these details. Salim Jarda in his confession dated 20.06.2004 has also stated that he had accompanied Salim Panwala, Siraj Bala, Jabir and Shaukat Lalu while going to the petrol pump of Kalabhai at about 9.30 p.m. for procuring petrol. He has also referred to the message sent by the Maulvi Saheb. Since he was reluctant to take any further part in such a bad act Rajak Kurkur had not allowed him to go. He was forced to stay in one room of the Guest House. He has then stated that next day morning he, along with Jabir Behra, Irfan, Shaukat Lalu and others had put the petrol filled carboys in the tempy and gone near A cabin. Rajak Kurkur and Salim Panwala had also followed them. He had thereafter not taken any part in the attack on the train and had remained standing at some distance."

"All these three persons have retracted their (175) confessions but that by itself is not a good ground for throwing them out of consideration. When considered along with other facts proved by the evidence details given by this accused regarding the manner in which coach S/6 was burnt appear to be true. These confessions disclose that Rajak Kurkur and Salim Panwala were the two main persons who had organized execution of the plan and that what was being done was according to what was planned earlier and the directions of Maulvi Umarji. All the acts like procuring petrol, circulating false rumour, stopping the train and entering in coach S/6 were in pursuance of the object of the conspiracy. The conspiracy hatched by these persons further appears to be a part of a larger conspiracy to create terror and destabilise the Administration."

"229. The Commission is required to consider the role and conduct of the then Chief Minister and/or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers, Police Officers other individuals and organizations in the Godhra incident (i) in dealing with any political or non-political organization which may be found to have been involved in the Godhra incident and also (ii) in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots and (iii) in the matter of recommendations and directions given by National Human Rights Commission from time to time. There is absolutely no evidence to show that either the Chief Minister and/or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers or Police offices had played any role in the Godhra incident or that there was any lapse on their part in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots or in the matter of not complying with the recommendations and directions given by National Human Rights Commission. There is no evidence regarding involvement of any definite religious (176) or political organization in the conspiracy. Some individuals who had participated in the conspiracy appear to be involved in the heinous act of setting coach S/6 on fire."

"“All the acts like procuring petrol, circulating false rumour, stopping the train and entering in coach S/6 were in pursuance of the object of the conspiracy,” concluded the Nanavati Report. “The conspiracy hatched by these persons further appears to be a part of a larger conspiracy to create terror and destabilise the Administration.”"

"This report has established that a group of Kashmiri terrorists of Jammu & Kashmir in collaboration with Pakistan’s ISI and some Muslim fundamentalists of Godhra hatched and executed this conspiracy in order to push the country into a communal cauldron. As documented by the Nanavati Commission , some of the leading accused and convicted turned out to be Congressmen of Godhra."

"It is easy to see why the Nanavati Report was frowned upon by Citizens for Justice and Peace, namely Activist Teesta Setalvad who asked the Supreme Court “to restrain the Gujarat Government from acting upon, circulating and publishing this report.” Fortunately on October 13, 2008, the highest court sharply turned down the petition, thus making the testimonies and inquiries available to all."

"This evidence from the Zenda Avesta as to the meaning of the word Varna leaves no doubt that it originally meant a class holding to a particular faith and it had nothing to do with colour or complexion."

"The true conclusion to be drawn from the Rig Veda is not that the Varna system did not exist, but that there were only three Varnas and that Shudras were not regarded as a fourth and a separate Varna. The second piece of evidence I rely on is the testimony of the two Brahmanas, the Satapatha and the Taittiriya. Both speak of the creation of three Varnas only. They do not speak of the creation of the Shudra as a separate."

"What is the difference between Caste and Varna as understood by the Mahatma? I find none. As defined by the Mahatma, Varna becomes merely a different name for Caste for the simple reason that it is the same in essence—namely pursuit of ancestral calling. Far from making progress the Mahatma has suffered retrogression. By putting this interpretation upon the Vedic conception of Varna he has really made ridiculous what was sublime. While I reject the Vedic Varnavyavastha for reasons given in the speech I must admit that the Vedic theory of Varna as interpreted by Swami Dayanand and some others is a sensible and an inoffensive thing. It did not admit birth as a determining factor in fixing the place of an individual in society. It only recognized worth. The Mahatma’s view of Varna not only makes nonsense of the Vedic Varna but it makes it an abominable thing. Varna and Caste are two very different concepts. Varna is based on the principle of each according to his worth-while Caste is based on the principle of each according to his birth. The two are as distinct as chalk is from cheese. In fact there is an antithesis between the two. If the Mahatma believes as he does in every one following his or her ancestral calling, then most certainly he is advocating the Caste System and that in calling it the Varna System he is not only guilty of terminologicale inexactitude, but he is causing confusion worse confounded. I am sure that all his confusion is due to the fact that the Mahatma has no definite and clear conception as to what is Varna and what is Caste and as to the necessity of either for the conservation of Hinduism."

"It has, at any rate, been an extremely consequential mistake. That white Aryan invaders defeated black aboriginal resisters has been taken over by numerous authors, including many who had no ideological agenda but naïvely lapped it up. It underpinned a second and similar mistranslation, viz. that the Sanskrit term for “caste”, varṇa, means “colour” in the sense of “skin colour” In fact, varṇa means “one in a spectrum”: a colour in the visual spectrum, a class in the social spectrum, but also a letter in the sound spectrum (hence varṇamāla for “alphabet”). The whole edifice of the “racial Aryan”, notorious through its Nazi application but equally popular in British colonial discourse and among its Indian copycats, was based on nothing better than a simple mistranslation... Actually, jati has all the meanings which the word “race” had in the 18th-19th century: kinship group, nation, race, species. Thus, manava-jati means “the human race”, or more accurately, “the human species”. And varna, “colour”, has nothing to do with skin colour, but refers to symbolic colours allotted to the elements, the cardinal directions, and likewise also to the layers of society... Moreover, “Colour” might even not be the original, Vedic meaning of varNa. Reformist Hindus eager to disentangle the institution of varNa from any doctrines of genetic determinism, derive it from the root var-, “choose” (as in svayamvara, “[a girl’s] own choice [of a husband]”), with the implication that one’s varNa is not a matter of birth but of personal choice. This seems to tally with Stanley Insler’s rendering, in his classic translation of The Gathas of Zarathustra, of the corresponding Avestan term varanA as “preference” (which other translators sometimes stretch to mean “conviction”, “religious affiliation”). But we believe that the root meaning is even simpler.... In the Rg-Veda, the word varNa usually (17 out of 22 times) refers to the “lustre” (i.e. “one’s own typical light”, a meaning obviously related to “colour”) of specified gods: Usha, Agni, Soma, etc. As for the remaining cases, in 3:34:5 and 9:71:2 it indicates the lustrous colour of the sky at dawn. In 1:104:2 and 2:12:4, reference is only to quelling the varNa of the DAsas, - meaning “the Dasas’ luster” (in the first case, Ralph Griffith translates it as “the fury of the DAsa”). Finally, in the erotic Rg-Vedic hymn 4:179, verse 6, where Agastya, in doing the needful with his wife Lopamudra to obtain progeny, is said to satisfy “both varNas”, this is understood by some as referring quite plainly to the two families of husband and wife, who rejoice in the arrival of a grandchild. Since the hymn mentions the conflict between sexuality and asceticism, others interpret it as meaning “both paths (of worldliness and world-renunciation)”. At any rate, there is simply no question of reading a racist meaning into it."

"In my opinion, the semantic development has passed through varna, "colour", in the sense of "one in a spectrum", with the spectrum of colours serving as a metaphor for other spectrums, e.g. varnamala, literally "garland of colours", meaning "garland of sounds", "sound spectrum", "alphabet". Society too is a spectrum, viz. a spectrum of functions or varnas."

"[Trautmann likewise points out that there is no contextual evidence supporting the nontraditional interpretation of varna, “colour, caste” as “skin colour”:] “On the evidence of use it appears that varna here simply means ‘category, social group’.”"

"G.C. Pande, the noted Sanskrit scholar, says that only the Dharmashastra in the post-Vedic period started to pervert the original idea of varna by conflating it with jati. And this period is when the ritual superiority of the brahmins got converted into a more or less formal hereditary right of priesthood."

"Discussing the early Vedic period, V.M. Apte says that the Rig Veda refers to the varnas in a way that cannot be considered discriminatory or hierarchical. He concludes that the Brahmins did not constitute an exclusive caste or race and the prerogative of composing hymns and officating at the services of the deities in the age of the Rig Veda was not entirely confined to men of priestly families. Even the other vocations such as being a poet or a physician were more flexible. Apte emphasizes that in the Rig Veda, there is not even a remote hint of prohibitions of inter-dining or intermarrying among the varnas; these are the prohibitions that have been considered the most serious forms of oppression in recent times."

"The case for color as a dominant factor in the development of caste was not supported by the evidence of historical literature, and that it was foreign scholars who had made it so."

"In that connection, the reading of varna, ‘colour, social class’, as referring to skin colour, was upheld as proof of the racial basis of caste. To put this false trail of 19th -century race theory to rest, let us observe here that neither the Rg-Veda nor the Manu Smrti connects varna to skin colour. The term varna, ‘colour’, is used here in the sense of ‘one in a spectrum’, just as the alphabet is called varna-mâla, ‘rosary of colours’, metaphor for ‘spectrum (of sounds)’. So, the varna-vyavasthâ is the ‘colour system’, i.e. the ‘spectrum’ of social functions, the role division in society. Just as the existence of social classes in our society doesn’t imply their endogamous separateness, the Vedic varna-s were not defined as endogamous castes."

"The idea is that all varnas are contained in every individual, instead of every individual being comprised within one of the varnas."

"The four varnas were created by me on the basis of individual character and occupation."

"We are reminded of this famous verse in the Tamil compendium of didactic poetry, Nālaṭiyār: When men speak of ‘good varna’ and ‘bad varna,’ it is a mere figure of speech, and has no real meaning. Not even by possessions, made by ancient glories, but by self-denial, learning, and energy is varna truly determined."

"On the 24th of the Tschet month, a big gathering of people is taken here to celebrate the birthday of Rama, so famous in entire India.”"

"By the impact of the festival of the Rāmanavami, bathing in the Sarayu river, having a darśan of the idol of Lord Rāma and beholding the Janmabhūmi, all they went to the Sāntānaka Loka by planes."

"By the merit of visit to Janmabhūmi, the darśana of the idol of Lord Rāma, bathing in the Sarayū river and the impact of the festival of the Rāmanavamī (the birthday of Rāma)all went to the Santanaka Loka in a plane."

"O best of sages! I made a darśana on the Rāmanavamī day."

"If people fast on the Rāmanavamī day, bathe in the Sarayū and make donation, they are liberated from the bound of birth."

"“Then Mahadeva said to the goddess, “I have told you the advantages of Ayodhya, the Sarayù, the Birthplace, and the day of the Navami. He who hears them, or relates them to others, obtains salvation in the end after having enjoyed all pleasures.”"

"Only by visiting it a man can get rid of staying (frequently) in a womb (i.e. rebirth). There is no need for making charitable gifts, performing penance or sacrifices or undertaking pilgrimages to holy spots. On the Navamī day the man should observe the holy vow. By the power of the holy bath and charitable gifts, he is liberated from the bondage of births."

"He, who fasts on the (Rāma) Navamī, takes bath and makes a donation, is liberated from all perils of birth by having a glance at the Janmasthāna."

"“By evening, we had arrived at Shri Kshetra Ayodhya and stopped at the Kale Rama temple. The festival of Ramnavami (the day Lord Rama was born) was only a few days away and so the city of Ayodhya was milling with some seven to eight lakh pilgrims and holy men. I had never seen so many sadhus and bairagis together. There were also many pilgrims from the south.” (p. 177)"

"The Ramnowmee, or festival commemorating the birth of Rama, fell with the eighth day of the Mohurrum, on the 30th March, 1871. The public part of the Hindoo festival at Bareilly consists in carrying out an idol of Rama to a grove on the outskirts of the city, where the image is washed and adorned with flowers, and, after ceremonial performances, brought back again to the temple. For the going and returning of this procession a route had to be laid down and Police were called in in large numbers to accompany and direct it. Its direction was widely apart from that taken by the Mahomedan processions accompanying the tazias; and as neither sect was allowed to pass through the more crowded thoroughfares of the town, there was no danger of an accidental collision. But the events showed that a portion of the Mahomedan community had resolved at all costs to interrupt the Hindoo festival, to attack the procession and-to plunder the Hindoos in different parts of the city. The procession ‘was a very large one and was accompanied by 4OO Police and several of the District Officers. It started about 2 P. M., and was to return an hour before sunset The grove was quickly reached and the due ceremonies performed. About half an hour afterwards the procession was attacked on its way back, not far from the temple, at a turning in the road. With much difficulty the assailants were beaten off, and the idol brought back without the procession being broken up. But meanwhile the Mahomedan mob, failing in its attack upon the procession, broke into parties and fell back upon the city, intent on rapine and bloodshed."

"The much hyped rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has lately been met with equally fervent declarations of their demise. In this article... I contest this assessment by arguing that the emerging powers were never solely, nor most importantly, merely an economic phenomenon. Instead, I show that emerging powers—specifically Brazil, India and China—have become an important political force in the global trading system and have had a profound and lasting impact on the World Trade Organization (WTO)). Contrary to the widespread assumption that these countries are too diverse to ally, I argue that the emerging powers displayed a remarkable degree of unity and cooperation, working in close concert to successfully challenge the dominance of the US and other established powers. As evidenced by the collapse of the Doha Round, the collective rise of Brazil, India and China substantially disrupted the functioning of one of the core institutions of the liberal economic order created under US hegemony."

"The role of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) during COVID-19 has validated the original rationale to create a new multilateral development bank... As the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly spread from Wuhan in Hubei province to surrounding regions, the Chinese Government turned to the newest multilateral development bank, the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) for support. Within weeks of the loan approval, the NDB disbursed $1bn to Hubei, Henan and Guangdong, the three most affected provinces in China. This loan, the single largest of the Bank to date, was earmarked to provide financial support for unplanned emergency health expenditure related to the fight against COVID-19....In 2008 for example, when few financial institutions were lending during the global financial crisis, it was the multilateral development banks which significantly increased their lending.... Under usual circumstances, it can take several months for loans to be disbursed for an infrastructure project. Disbursements for COVID-19 related assistance were made as bullet payments within three to four weeks after the loans were approved.... To date, the Bank approved and largely disbursed $4bn, which comprised of a $1bn COVID-19 response loan each to China, Brazil, India and South Africa. The full $10bn to be allocated during 2020 represents additional development assistance which would not have been available if the NDB was not created five years ago."

"Fruitful exchange of opinions concerning the drug situation in the BRICS states, the international and regional trends of illegal trafficking in narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors, as well as the impact of various internal and external factors on the situation took place during the summit.... The common points emerged during the discussions include need for real time information sharing among the member states and need to curb increased drug trafficking through maritime routes. Misuse of darknet and other advanced technologies for drug trafficking was one of the key focal areas of the meeting... The growing economic might of BRICS countries, their significance as one of the main driving forces of global economic development, their substantial population and abundant natural resources form the foundation of their influence on the international scene and are the driving forces behind the grouping. Among other areas of collaboration, matters pertaining to drug trafficking is an important area of cooperation among the BRICS member states"

"Eradicating poverty is high on the list of both the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals. Both, were endorsed by the heads of state or government of the 190-plus member countries of the United Nations, including BRICS. As a member of the UN as well as BRICS, China's contribution to global poverty reduction is much more than its contribution to global economic growth... China is set to eliminate absolute poverty by the end of this year... There is no doubt that the fast economic growth in China and India has played a key role in reducing poverty in the two countries. Slower but positive growth－before the novel coronavirus pandemic broke out－also helped the other BRICS countries to lower their poverty rates... In short, all BRICS countries have made progress in poverty alleviation work, even though the progress has been uneven due to their different growth rates and the levels of inequality in their societies. But despite growth playing a dominant role in poverty reduction, it would be a mistake to overlook inequality, because a high level of inequality directly undermines growth potential and indirectly offsets the beneficial impact of growth on poverty reduction."

"Deputy foreign ministers and special representatives of BRICS countries for the Middle East and Northern Africa have underlined importance of non-interference in the work of Syria’s Constitutional Committee in Geneva, they said in a joint statement following a consultative meeting held via videoconference on Friday. The meeting participants noted the importance of lunching the committee with the decisive contribution of the Astana peace process guarantors and all other countries involved in the peaceful resolution of the conflict and also welcomed efforts of Geir Pedersen, UN Secretary-General Special Envoy for Syria, to establish a sustainable and effective operation of this body. "Conviction was expressed that to reach common ground the Constitutional Committee members should be guided by pursuit of compromise and constructive cooperation without foreign interference," the text reads. The parties also reaffirmed their commitment to sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Syria, noting that the conflict in this country cannot be resolved militarily. "They also reaffirmed their commitment to advancing political process, led and guided by Syrians themselves through the UN cooperation in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254, which should result in a constitutional reform as well as free and fair elections," the diplomats stressed."

"It is easy to write of rocks and wilds, of torrents and precipices; it is easy to tell of the awe such scenes inspire:... But it is not so simple, to many surely not very possible, to convey an adequate idea of the stern and rugged majesty of some scenes; to paint their lonely desertness, or describe the undefinable sensation of reverence and dread that steals over the mind while contemplating the deathlike ghastly calm that is shed over them; and when at such a moment we remember our homes, our friends, our firesides, and all social intercourse with our fellows, and feel our present solitude, and far distance from all these dear ties, how vain is it to strive at description! Surely such a scene is Gungotree.... We were now in the centre of the stupendous Himala, the loftiest and perhaps most rugged range of mountains in the world. We were at the acknowledged source of that noble river, equally an object of veneration and a source of fertility, plenty, and opulence to Hindostan; and we had now reached the holiest shrine of Hindoo worship which these holy hills contain. These are surely striking considerations, combining with the solemn grandeur of the place, to move the feelings strongly."

"Nature seems to have taken pleasure in embellishing and enriching the favoured country of Hindostan with every choicest gift. Under a pure sky and brilliant sun the soil produces the most exquisite fruits, and the most abundant harvests; the rocks are rich in gems, the mountains teem with gold, and the fleecy pod of the cotton furnishes in profusion the light garment fitted to the climate. In travelling in the interior, your eyes will often be enchanted with the most delicious landscapes. Amidst stupendous forests you will not unfrequently be charmed with a cultivated spot, where, if ever, you might realize the dreams of the poets, and indulge in that impassioned indolence which is the parent of poetry and of the fine arts."

"In the country of Hindustan there are four defences,... The second defence consists of woods and forests and trees, which, interweaving stem with stem and branch with branch, render it very difficult to penetrate into that country."

"My upbringing does not allow me to take a life... When we go against nature then everything becomes dangerous; human beings too become dangerous. On the other hand, if we co-operate with nature, then she also co-operates with us."

"What is to say that if the digital platform is regularised today, it won’t be censored tomorrow?... To support or oppose tools in the hand of the government depending on which political party is in power is an exceptionally narrow word view that doesn’t help anyone."

"I speak as the Editor of OpIndia when I say that our platform itself believes that majority media houses have lost their ethical code. We have over 300 articles filed under “Media lies”. To ask us then, to conform to the ethical standards set by the very institution we oppose is a monstrosity at myriad levels... The moment you censor thoughts, you kill the soul of a man and the spirit of the writer. I oppose any regulation that may just as easily morph into tools of censorship."

"We have worked with relentless focus to show how a certain section of the mainstream media distorts facts and maligns those who dare to question them. OpIndia too was mocked and maligned – and that process has not stopped, nor it will stop ever, we are sure – we were treated as outcasts, branded ‘trolls’ (we don’t complain), personal lives of people associated with the website were targeted, but we persisted. While we made these powerful enemies, what kept us going was the fact that we made many friends too. We could create a community that stood by us and continues to support us to this day."

"In the last few days, you would have noticed that we were the target of a coordinated attack from the usual suspects as well as from some unusual corners... I am not saying that they can’t make mistakes, and when our well-wishers like you would point them out, they will make amends. But this time, their only mistake was that they were standing on the wrong side of the ideological divide. But that stand is non-negotiable. That’s what is the soul, the identity of India. That’s not going to change."

"The OpIndia page on Wikipedia is negative because OpIndia dared to challenge the ecosystem and the foot-soldiers of the ecosystem decided to hit back at us."

"The OpIndia page on Wikipedia has been created and edited by an ecosystem that the OpIndia went after and exposed, time and again."

"If I disapproved of the ban on The Satanic Verses, if I disapproved of Dinanath Batra (whom I called “Ban Man” in my article in The Washington Post), if I disapproved of how Taslima Nasreen was hounded and attacked in Hyderabad by Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, then I can’t suddenly do a volte face and chest-thump today. When you ban a book, it acquires a kind of cult status because the market fuels curiosity. That is what happened with other banned books. In fact, there are books chronicling banned books by different regimes in history...All I am saying is that forcing Bloomsbury India to withdraw the book is counter-productive – both politically and in the pure sense of how market forces work... Where do you draw the line? Today, many are relieved that this book will not find a publisher in Bloomsbury. But what will you do if Swarajya or OpIndia launches a publishing house of its own in the future?'"

"We live in a post-truth world where the facts often get lost in the cacophony of emotional wails and motivated narratives. One website which has occupied the driver’s seat in the information-warfare era is Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become the agent of misinformation and propaganda. In a post-truth world where facts are relegated to the ‘right-wing imagination’ and the Left narrative is considered as the Gospel truth, Wikipedia reigns supreme."

"“Fact-checking” sounds like a new business. Not enough people have figured out their tricks yet. And it certainly sounds like a noble thing to do. Just like journalism, back in the day. I challenge you: show me one difference between the job description of a journalist and a fact checker. If it walks like a duck, if it looks like a duck and if it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck! You can’t seriously fall for this. Ten years ago, the online right waged a battle against “journalism.” And they won. The con artists are back. Dressed as fact-checkers. The struggle starts all over again."

"OpIndia is a news and current affairs website that’s hugely popular with those affiliated with the centre-right ideology... The website also runs a fact-checking initiative that extensively debunks media lies and popular personalities who often criticise the Narendra Modi led-BJP government. OpIndia is the only fact-checking website that Prime Minister Narendra Modi follows on Twitter, along with its editor. The website received widespread attention from several national as well as international media organisations when its editor Nupur J. Sharma wrote a series of articles criticising BBC’s research on fake news in India and questioning the credibility of its findings."

"No country is free from the slave media. The freedom from ‘Godi Media’ will bring new freedom."

"“99.99 per cent of Indian media is ‘Godi Media’, doing ‘chamchagiri’ of Narendra Modi, showing ‘bakwas’…. TV is making a fool of you, brainwashing you with bogus debates and propaganda”:"

"I bring to this nation of four hundred million, assurance from my own people that they feel that the welfare of America is bound up with the welfare of India. America shares with India the deep desire to live in freedom, human dignity, and peace with justice. A new and great opportunity for that sort of life has been opened up to all men by the startling achievements of men of science during recent decades. The issue placed squarely before us today is the purpose for which we use science. Before us we see long years of what can be a new era; mankind in each year reaping a richer harvest from the fields of earth--gaining a more sure mastery of elemental power for human benefit--sharing an expanding commerce in goods and in knowledge and in wisdom--dwelling together in peace."

"Above all, our basic goals are the same. Ten years ago, your distinguished Prime Minister, when I was his host at Columbia University in New York, said: "Political subjection, racial inequality, economic misery--these are the evils we have to remove if we would assure peace." Our Republic, since its founding, has been committed to a relentless, ceaseless fight against those same three evils: political subjection, racial inequality, economic misery."

"Our military supply policy toward Pakistan has, more than any other single issue, contributed to the sharp deterioration in Indo-US relations."

"The peptalk about India and the US being "natural allies" as "the biggest and the oldest democracy" has little impact on real-life policies... The American state is arming Pakistan, and even if it were to fully stop arms deliveries to Pakistan, it still carries a legacy of having armed the Pakistani Army and trained the Pakistani secret service, agents of terror against Indian citizens and the Indian state. The guilt for keeping Indo-American relations unfriendly is entirely on the American side... For those who look at facts rather than at newspaper headlines, it is obvious that there is no danger whatsoever of the US giving the impression of valuing a Muslim life less than a Hindu life. Rather the reverse, and this consistently for decades. In 1971, the Pakistani Army was butchering Hindus in East Bengal by the hundreds of thousands (many times the total number of victims of Hindutva since then), yet the USA stood by Pakistan and did nothing to rein their Islamic allies in. Throughout the 1990s and till today, Pak-backed terrorists have been butchering Hindus in numerous shootings and bomb attacks and ethnically cleansing them from the Kashmir Valley, yet the USA have not used their leverage with Pakistan to stop this continuous terror wave. Dr. Hathaway's misrepresentation of this highly unbalanced American policy adds insult to injury."

"The young Hindu, of course, is optimistic. He has been to America and he has been contaminated by the cheap idealism of the Americans, contaminated by the ubiquitous bathtub, the five-and-ten-cent store bric-a-brac, the bustle, the efficiency, the machinery, the high wages, the free libraries, etc., etc. His ideal would be to Americanize India. He is not at all pleased with Gandhi’s retrogressive mania. Forward, he says, just like a YMCA man. As I listen to his tales of America I see how absurd it is to expect of Gandhi that miracle which will deroute the trend of destiny. India’s enemy is not England, but America. India’s enemy is the time spirit, the hand which cannot be turned back. Nothing will avail to offset this virus which is poisoning the whole world. America is the very incarnation of doom. She will drag the whole world down to the bottomless pit."

"Nixon was baffled and annoyed by Americans’ popular sympathies for India, which he repeatedly described as a psychological disorder. He scorned a “phobia” among some Americans that “everything that India does is good, and everything Pakistan does is bad,” and once told the military leader of Pakistan, “There is a psychosis in this country about India.” The Americans who most liked India tended to be the ones that Nixon could not stand. India was widely seen as a State Department favorite, irritating the president. He recoiled from the country’s mystical fascination to the hippie counterculture, which he despised. Henry Kissinger thought that Nixon saw Democratic “obsequiousness toward India as a prime example of liberal softheadedness.”"

"Nixon’s anti-Indian leanings had been reinforced when John Kennedy took a warmly pro-India line. India seemed a cause for the Democrats. This point was once driven home by George H. W. Bush, Nixon’s ambassador at the United Nations, who knew how to play up to his boss. Bush said that a friend of Kennedy’s had explained that “Kennedy spent more time on India, and the mystique, I know they didn’t like us, but it was a kind of a liberal mystique.” That, Bush and Nixon agreed, was what they were up against."

"But then he said, “Now let me be very blunt,” and ripped into Kenneth Keating: “Every Ambassador who goes to India falls in love with India.” (This direct presidential attack was so far out of bounds that Kissinger and Saunders censored it out of their official record of the conversation for the State Department.) Nixon told the senior State Department officials that they “have to cool off the pro-Indians in the State Department and out in South Asia.” He added that fewer Americans swooned for Pakistan, “because the Pakistanis are a different breed. The Pakistanis are straightforward—and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line.”"

"In one of the awkward alignments of the Cold War, President Richard Nixon had lined up the democratic United States with this authoritarian government, while the despots in the Soviet Union found themselves standing behind democratic India."

"Nixon and Kissinger actually drove their South Asia policies with gusto and impressive creativity—but only when silencing dissenters in the ranks, like Blood, or pursuing their hostility toward India. They found no appeal in India, neither out of ideological admiration for India’s flawed but functioning democracy, nor from a geopolitical appreciation of the sheer size and importance of the Indian colossus. Instead, they denounced Indians individually and collectively, with an astonishingly personal and crude stream of vitriol. Alone in the Oval Office, these famous practitioners of dispassionate realpolitik were all too often propelled by emotion."

"Nixon and Kissinger bear responsibility for a significant complicity in the slaughter of the Bengalis. This overlooked episode deserves to be a defining part of their historical reputations. But although Nixon and Kissinger have hardly been neglected by history, this major incident has largely been whitewashed out of their legacy—and not by accident. Kissinger began telling demonstrable falsehoods about the administration’s record just two weeks into the crisis, and has not stopped distorting since. Nixon and Kissinger, in their vigorous efforts after Watergate to rehabilitate their own respectability as foreign policy wizards, have left us a farrago of distortions, half-truths, and outright lies about their policy toward the Bengali atrocities."

"[the Rohillas were, with few exceptions] the only sect of Mahometans in India who exercised the profession of husbandry; and their improvements of the various branches of agriculture, were amply recompensed by the abundance and superiour quality of the production of Rohilcund."

"The Rohillas displayed their iconoclastic fervour during the campaing, melting all the silver and gold idols they could seize. In the interests of the Himalayan trade and the pilgrimage traffic, the Kumaun rajas maintained cordial relations with them."

"What has not been appreciated is that the Rohillas, after establishing themselves in the province in the early eighteenth century, accomplished an almost perfect obliteration of any rights which may previously have been in force. Almost every landowner, no matter how petty, who was considered to be a potential source of difficulty and who could possibly be a focal point of anti-Rohilla activity was uprooted and either killed or forced to cross the Ganges. The old Hindu village institutions were generally subverted and the Rohilla chiefs leased the villages for a period of ten years to the highest bidder at a public auction. ... Henceforth, until the destruction of Rohilla power, the only proprietors in Rohilkhand were to be the Rohilla chiefs. Rohilla rule was terminated in 1774 when the country was overrun by British"

"The missionaries do not ask us to practise costly rituals or change our lifestyles, languages or even our wardrobe. Many of the converted tribals, like me, have not even been asked to change names. We have received the gospel of Jesus, enlightenment, education. My own Nyishi tribesmen were rude, uncultured and a warrior tribe. The church has made us better people. What is wrong in that? ... Christianity was born in Central Asia. How can it be foreign?"

"Missionaries offer medicine, food grain and cash to the needy on the back of strong funding from outside. Earlier, we were all one. There was no disharmony. But now converted tribals — our own brethren till a couple of years back — look down upon us."

"They are working for conversion; we are working for education. Their plans are treacherous... Tribal culture ought to be preserved with the same zeal that missionaries display while converting tribals."

"[Thus, the Nishi tribe in the North-East finds that in Christian mission schools] “a good many Nishi youths have been converted to Christianity. This in itself need not have created any difficulty, for Nishis, like most tribals, are not greatly concerned about the beliefs of their fellow-tribesmen, and if the Christian converts had been equally tolerant, their rejection of traditional Nishi religion might have been ignored by the great mass of conservative tribesmen. However, the converts seem to have been lacking in tolerance and tact, and educated young men of villages affected by the ideological split to whom I spoke in 1980 complained bitterly that Christians deliberately disrupted the harmony of community life. They allegedly refuse to share the houses of adherents of the old faith, and this meant that old parents were abandoned by their converted children, who claimed that they could not stay in dwellings where ‘devils’ were worshipped. …"

"My informants insisted that the missions encouraged the establishment of separate settlements for Christians, and that the Christians refused to participate in village festivals, thereby demonstrating their dissociation from the tribal community. It was alleged, moreover, that converts, not satisfied with this symbolic withdrawal from village life, went a step further by abusing and physically attacking priests as they invoked the gods in the performance of traditional Nishi rituals.”..."

"“Nishi teachers at the government high-school in Yazali, who were members of a youth organization formed to promote traditional tribal culture, told me how frustrated they were because they could not match the large sums lavished by the missions on propaganda which is undermining the old Nishi life-style.”"

"There is, however, a remarkable abhorrence,among the Santals, of the Mohammedans, whom they call Turuk, a term which carries a connotation of contempt. According to their tradition, the sojourn of the Santal ancestors in ‘the corrupt and defiled land’ of the Muslims was attended with such grave harassment that contact with Muslims must be avoided. ... the Santals of Pangro, likemany other Santals elsewhere, however, do not accept food from these Muslims."

"“While among the non-Christians the most important part of the marriage ceremony is the Sindradan, or smearing the bride’s forehead with vermillion, among the Christians the exchange of rings by bride and groom marks them as husband and wife. The applying of sindoor [= vermillion] is tabooed.” The clean break is also in evidence in the funeral rites: “In the funerary ceremonies, there is little trace of non-Christian customs and modes of thought.... The converts are, by and large, being alienated from their village communities. Moreover, converts also become estranged from their own kinsfolk. They are prohibited by their own religion from taking part in the ritual offerings and ceremonies [for the ancestral and other deities]. These ritual practices and ceremonies … act as a strong unifying force among the household and family members.... Cutting themselves off from many aspects of their old community life, the converts find themselves members of a new community, the Christian community."

"The Press must become a unit of the government."

"India under Indira Gandhi was also probably the arena for more KGB active measures than anywhere else in the world, though their significance appears to have been considerably exaggerated by the Centre, which overestimated its ability to manipulate Indian opinion. According to KGB files, by 1973 it had ten Indian newspapers on its payroll (which cannot be identified for legal reasons) as well as a press agency under its ‘control’. During 1972, the KGB claimed to have planted 3,789 articles in Indian newspapers – probably more than in any other country in the non-Communist world. According to its files, the number fell to 2,760 in 1973 but rose to 4,486 in 1974 and 5,510 in 1975.66 In some major NATO countries, despite active-measures campaigns, the KGB was able to plant little more than 1 per cent of the articles which it placed in the Indian press."

"Indian media, especially the metro-based English media, is the most dishonest institution of India.... The media has created a ‘group of somebodies’ and a ‘group of nobodies’."

"Yet, almost all the Western papers have chosen to blacken Hinduism almost as thoroughly as the secularist Indian press has done. The first reason is that the Western correspondents in Delhi just don't know very much, and also don't feel the need to find out more. Their work is not considered important by their editors, because India is still perceived as a backward and economically unimportant country. Western correspondents in Delhi are very lazy. I have been to some press conferences concerning this Ayodhya affair (which involves principles, has generated an unprecedented mass movement, and has toppled a government), and not met any foreign press persons there. In Ayodhya and in the offices of those very people that could give authentic background information, again I did not see any foreign correspondents. I don't know what they tell their employers, but I can testify first-hand that they are not doing any journalistic work here, except for copying the Indian English-language papers. The second reason is that they very uncritically swallow that version of the facts which happens to reach them. Since they hang out a lot with the westernized clique that controls the media, education and the government, they don't know better than that those people's viewpoint is authoritative."

"The advent of Christian broadcasting in India, transnational as well as local channels, offers the space for identification with a “Christian Umma” far beyond the boundaries of the territorialized nation-state."

"Today the Khokhars are Split up into Muslim, Rajput and Jat sections. Originally they were all Hindus. Both Minhaj Siraj and Hasan Nizami describe them as infidels.“ The tale of their resistance to Islam and conversion to it synchronises with the Muslim invasions of India."

"Great plunder was taken and many captives, so that five Hindu [Khokhar] captives could be bought for a dinar."

"The Khokhars were not annihilated in this affair by any means, and gave great trouble in after years..."

"Mahmud protected his flanks with entrenchments and instead of following his usual impetuous tactics strove to entice the enemy to attack him in his own strong position. In this he succeeded and the Hindus attacked on December 31. A force of 30,000 Khokars, bareheaded and barefooted and armed with strange weapons, charged both his flanks simultaneously, passed over his trenches, and did such execution among his troops that he was meditating a retreat when a fortunate accident decided the day in his favour."

"The Kokars were completely defeated, and, " in that country there remained not an inhabitant to light a fire." " Much spoil in slaves and weapons, beyond all enumeration, fell into the possession of the victors.""

"For instance, when Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak mounted a combined attack on the Khokhars of the Salt Range (Koh-i-Jud), “great plunder was taken and many captives, so that five Hindu [Khokhars] captives could be bought for a dinar”. Captives were so plentiful that they were also sent “to sell in Khurasan, not long after.”"

"The next morning the mountaineer coolies arrived, and a strange ill-favoured race they are. In their high cheeks, long narrow eyes, broad fronts, and narrow chins, they bear an evident affinity to the Tartar. Their stature is very short, but they are wide-chested and strongly limbed, and show prodigious strength in carrying burdens up the steep mountain tracks. The Gourkahs, in our wars with them, proved the enemies best worthy of the British arms in India. It is said that these hardy little warriors speak with the greatest contempt of their gigantic long bearded neighbours the Seikhs. They make first-rate tirailleurs, and at the siege of Bhurtpore one of the Company’s Gourkah regiments much distinguished itself. They appeared on that occasion, somewhat pigmy by the side of our British grenadiers, their average height being barely 5 feet."

"…Colonel Young, who is the chief man here, commands a most interesting native regiment, the Gourkas. I should say they will fight less well now we have brought them down to our English drilling and nonsense, but there was a time, when four or five hundred of them in their hills beat our troops considerably and kept beating them for a whole year. They are the most dwarfish race that I ever saw and look like a little set of children in their dark uniforms. Last year a party of them fell in with a tiger on the road we travelled yesterday. They were on foot and had no guns, but they made a circle round him, and when he charged one side they cut at him on the other with their swords, and so killed him."

"The Khas, Magars, Gurungs, and Thakurs are the military tribes of the kingdom, from which the fighting element of the Nepalese army is drawn. They are the descendants of the aboriginal tribes who intermarried with Rajputs and other Hindus who took refuge from Muhammadan conquest in the hills of Nepal in the twelfth century.Since the Gurkha conquest, they have spread throughout the whole country, though their real habitat is to the west of the Valley of Nepal. It is to these tribes that the often misapplied term ‘ Gurkha or ‘ Gurkhali ' should be confined."

"They are ' said to have come originally from Rajputana, whence they fled early in the fourteenth century, after the capture of Chitor by Ala-ud-dm Khiljl. After passing through the Kumaun hills, they first settled near Palpa, and thence gradually extended their dominions. Prithwi Narayan gladly availed himself of the opportunity thus given of establishing a secure footing in Nepal. Ranjit Mai, however, soon found out his mistake, and was obliged to come to terms with the neighbouring kings in order to resist the encroachments of the Gurkhas. Nevertheless Prithwi Narayan succeeded in taking Kirttipur, a town belonging to the Patan Raja, and then proceeded to attack Patan itself. At this junctui’e the Nepalese applied for assistance to the British Government. Aid yas granted, and Captain Kinloch was dispatched with a small force in the middle of the rainy season. But his force was quite inadequate for the purpose it had in view, and being still further weakened by sickness, was repulsed before he had penetrated into the Valley. The Gurkhas then returned and attacked Katmandu. Prithwi Narayan, having obtained possession of this city by treachery, directed his attention again to Patan and later on to Bhatgaon. Both were taken, and in 1769 the conquest of Nepal by the Gurkhas was complete."

"Gurgaon district abounds in Meos. They are the same stock as Minas of the Aravalli Hills. They fought the Muslims for long, but eventually succumbed to become Muslim. Now, although almost all have become Muhammadan, they have retained Hindu customs which are now under attack of tablighis."

"Meos from Gurgaon, Bharatpur and Alwar not very long time ago, on the instigation of the Muslim League, demanded Meostan and they were involved in very serious rioting against the Hindus—their neighbours at the time of Freedom. Right in 1947 a serious riot was going on by these Meos against their Hindu neighbours. These Meos, under this very lax permit system, are returning and demanding their property. This is secularism no doubt, but a very one sided and undesirable type of secularism which goes invariably against and to the prejudice of Sikh and Hindu refugees."

"Shafia Zubair said, “Meo community resides in Alwar, Bharatpur, Nuh, and in some parts of Mathura, where Krishna was born. I traced the ancestry of the community to know what our history is. The result says that we are from the lineage of Lord Krishna. Even if we have converted our religion, the blood does not change, and it belongs to Ram and Krishna.” Shafia Zubair added, “You should all remember who Meos are (descendants of Ram- Krishna) and consider them as Mewa (dry fruits). Nobody should tell us again and again that we are backward. It has given three MLAs (Zubair, Wajid Ali from Nagar, and Zahida Khan from Kaman) and you will see where the Mewat will reach in the next 10 years.” Therefore, Mewat should not be considered a backward region, she said."

"Meos are the inhabit­ants of Mewat, the term for the hill country in the states of Alwar, Bhurtpur and…Delhi, and are probably folk of pre-Aryan origin. They are all Moslems in name…"

"[Maulana Wahiduddin, a former official at the Jammat-i-Is­lami who wrote the Tabligh Movement describes the Meos that Ilyas saw:] “These uncouth and illiterate people…in practical life…were far from Islam. They kept their Hindu names, like Nahar Singh and Bhup Singh; they left a lock of hair [chõtî] on top of the shaven head as Hindus do; they worshipped idols, celebrated all the Hindu festivals and made sacrifices to the pre-Islamic gods and goddesses. They could not even recite the…kalimah. So unfamil­iar…was the sight of …namaz…that if by chance they came across someone praying, they gathered to enjoy the spectacle, assum­ing that the person must either be mad or suffering from some ailment due to which he was kneeling and prostrating himself again and again.”"

"The Meos, like the Hindus, did not marry within the gotra… Meos… continued with their Hindu names or suffixed them with Khan, and celebrated not only Diwali and Dashehra but most important, Janamashtami. Because of geo-historic tradi­tions of proximity to Mathura and Vrindavan, Krishna is inte­grated into Muslim consciousness at folk level in the Brij and Mewat area…Few Meos…could recite the kalima."

"Turning from western to northern India, there were in Uttar Pradesh in the medieval period as of now, Chamars, Ahirs, Brahmanas, Rajputs, Koris, Kurmis and the Bhars. They have all lived, the high and the low, as part of the Hindu civilization. Curiously enough, the most numerous caste of Uttar Pradesh was, in about 1900 or at the end of the medieval period, the Chamars. As per the Imperial Gazetteer, “Musahars, Dosadhs and Chamars may be considered semi-Hinduized aborigines”, but this is unnecessary hairsplitting. All these castes were full- fledged Hindus, as vouched by Alberuni. Chamars formed the largest groups in the districts of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Mathura and Agra,” as well as in Banda, Kalinjar, Jhansi, Jalaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Fyzabad and sev- eral other districts like Jaunpur, Azamgarh and Ghazipur.*> In Meerut and Bulandshahr districts, Chamars were the most nu- merous, comprising 20 per cent of the population. So also was the case in Aligarh, Agra and Mathura.”*In Banda and Jalaun too they formed the largest class. But let not the list be made too exhaustive."

"The Bhils who mainly reside in the hilly country between Abu and Asirgarh and have also spread into the plains of Gujarat and spilled over into northern Deccan, are Hindus. Some even claim to be reckoned as Rajputs. But many of their sub-tribes or kuls pay no respect to the Brahmanas or Hindu Gods, nor do they build temples. They worship only Devi, but celebrate Holi, Dushera and Diwali like other Hindus.” They have always remained Hindu. It is not only among the Bhils but all over the country that many tribes have as many forms of Hinduism as are permitted by the Hindu spirit of accommodating social and religious diversities."

"The Bhils have long ceased to be a homogeneous people. In the course of millennia, various ele- ments have fused to shape the community. During their long and tortuous history, other aboriginal groups which came under their sway have probably merged with them, losing their identity. One can see a wide range of physical types and complexion. The vari- ation in complexion is very striking indeed, ranging between fair to quite dark-skinned... There is no consensus among scholars on the exact ethnic character of the Bhils. They have been alternatively described as proto-Australoid, Dravidian or Veddoid."

"The second largest Scheduled Tribe of India is the Bhil community, spread out in southern Rajasthan, western Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and northern Maharashtra. They speak Bhili which belongs to the family of Sanskrit. They are the largest Vanavasi community in Gujarat. Nearly all the Bhils identify themselves as Hindus and celebrate festivals like Holi, Diwali, Navaratri, Rakhi, etc. Historically, the Bhils played an important role in the coronation ceremony of many Rajput chiefs."

"We arrived at Wasnud…The Bheels were to be our watchmen as well as guides; and their shrill calls from one to the other were heard all night. We were told not to be surprised at this choice, since these poor thieves are, when trusted, the trustiest of men, and of all sentries the most wakeful and indefatigable. They and the Kholees [Kolis], a race almost equally wild, are uniformly preferred in Guzerat for the service of the police, and as durwans to gentlemen’s houses and gardens. All such persons are here called Sepoys, and with more accuracy than the regular troops, inasmuch as their weapons are still really the bow and arrow, “sip,” whence the Asiatic soldier derives his appellation."

"That (country) which (lies) between the Himavat and the Vindhya (mountains) to the east of Prayaga and to the west of Vinasana (the place where the river Sarasvati disappears) is called Madhyadesa (the central region). But (the tract) between those two mountains (just mentioned), which (extends) as far as the eastern and the western oceans, the wise call Aryavarta (the country of the Aryans)."

"Aryavarata was the sacred land of Dharma, the elevated path to Heaven and to Moksha; where men were nobler than the Devatas themselves; where all knowledge, thought and worship were rooted in the Vedas, revealed by the Devatas themselves."

"Visaladeva, the Chahamana king, proudly declares that “he once more made Aryavarta (Northern India) what its name signifies (abode of the Aryas i.e. Hindus) by repeatedly exterminating the Mlechchhas (Muslims, who had rendered the name meaningless by their occupation of the country)."

"The Vedic Hindus called themselves Aryas, and the tract in which they settled themselves in India has the distinctive name of Aryadesa ... The Aryadesa or Arya-vartta [sic!] of Manu is bounded on the north by the Himalaya; and on the south by the Vindhyan chain."

"Tradition attributed the Dhar Iron Pillar to Bhoja, who was well versed in iron metallurgy as is attested by his Yuktikalpataru . The pillar was double the height of the Delhi Iron Pillar and weighed at least one tonne more. It was the tallest and heaviest (7000 kg) pillar in the world."

"Outside this fort (of Dhar) there is a Jami Masjid and a square pillar lies in front of the Masjid with some portions embedded in the ground. When Bahadur Shah conquered Malwa, he was anxious to take the pillar with him to Gujarat. In the act of digging out, it fell down and was broken into two pieces (one piece 22’ long and the other 13’). I (Jahangir) have seen it lying on the ground carelessly and so ordered the bigger piece to be carried to Agra, which I hope to be used as a lamp-post in the courtyard of my father’s (Akbar’s) tomb"

"...It is the tallest iron pillar so far anywhere in the world."

"He who has one word in his mind, which becomes ten when he speaks, hundred when he writes and thousands when he quarrels is a babu. He whose strength is one-time in his hands, ten-times in his mouth, a hundred times behind the back and absent at the time of action is a babu. He whose deity is the Englishman, preceptor the Brahmo preacher, scriptures the newspapers and pilgrimage the National Theatre is a babu. He who declares himself a Christian to missionaries, a Brahmo to Keshabchandra, a Hindu to his father and an atheist to the Brahman beggar is a babu. One who drinks water at home, alcohol at his friend’s, receives abuse from the prostitute and kicks from his boss is a babu. He who hates oil when he bathes, his own fingers when he eats and his mother tongue when he speaks is indeed a babu . . . O King, the people whose virtues I have recited to you will come to believe that by chewing pan [betel], lying prone on the bed, making bilingual conversation and smoking tobacco, they will reconquer India."

"Another illustration of this spirit of exploitation is furnished by the Muslim insistence upon cow-slaughter and the stoppage of music before mosques. Islamic law does not insist upon the slaughter of the cow for sacrificial purposes and no Musalman, when he goes to Haj, sacrifices the cow in Mecca or Medina. But in India they will not be content with the sacrifice of any other animal."

"Seven of these 22 riots, or roughly one-third of them, occurred on the day of the celebration of the annual Muslim festival of Bakr-i-Id at the end of May. The celebration of this festival is always a dangerous time in Hindu-Muslim relations. The Muslim regard it as a day of animal sacrifice, and as the animal chosen is almost always a cow the slightest tension between the two communities is apt to produce an explosion."

"…The temple of Nagarkot, which is outside the city, was taken at the very outset… On this occasion many mountaineers became food for the flashing sword. And that golden umbrella, which was erected on the top of the cupola of the temple, they riddled with arrows… And black cows, to the number of 200, to which they pay boundless respect, and actually worship, and present to the temple, which they look upon as an asylum, and let loose there, were killed by the Musulmans. And, while arrows and bullets were continually falling like drops of rain, through their zeal and excessive hatred of idolatry they filled their shoes full of blood and threw it on the doors and walls of the temple… the army of Husain Quli Khan was suffering great hardships. For these reasons he concluded a treaty with them… and having put all things straight he built the cupola of a lofty mosque over the gateway of Rajah Jai Chand."

"A second example of a feature that is widespread but not universal in Hinduism is revulsion at the killing of cows. This is a recurrent theme in friction between Hindus and Muslims. What may be the earliest reference to Muslims in an Indian text correctly ascribes to them the view that there is no sin in eating animals such as cattle. A late twelfth- century poet in the north gives a fanciful explanation of the ugly physical features of a Muslim ambassador in terms of “the vast number of cows he had slain.” A southern poetess describing Muslim maraudings in the second half of the fourteenth century speaks of a river “flowing red with the blood of slaughtered cows.” A Marāṭhī ballad that may date from the seventeenth century tells of a Muslim general who desecrated a Hindu idol and built a mosque in its place: “After the mosque was built,” the ballad continues, “a cow was slaughtered.” Another early ballad describes a particularly obnoxious Muslim— a Rājpūt convert and a voracious cow- eater— who went so far as to order the sacrifice of a pregnant cow. Muslim sources complement this picture. For example, Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1624) saw the sacrifice of the cow as “one of the most important rites” of Islam in India, precisely because of its offensiveness to Hindus— though wise or weak Muslim rulers would from time to time forbid the practice for just that reason..."

"Arun Shourie quotes Govind Singh as declaring: 'Let the path of the pure [khâlsâ panth] prevail all over the world, let the Hindu dharma dawn and all delusion disappear. (...) May I spread dharma and prestige of the Veda in the world and erase from it the sin of cow-slaughter.'"

"About this time, I heard of a well known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the talk of the town that, when he was baptized, he had to eat beef and drink liquor, that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely, thought I, a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one's own clothes did not deserve the name. I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity."

"Meanwhile, another Tabligh movement had arisen in Haryana under the leadership of Shah Muhammad Ramzan (1769-1825). “He found that the converted Rajputs and Jats… were in no way different from their Hindu counterparts in culture, customs and celebration of religious festivals… Shah Muhammad Ramzan used to sojourn in areas inhabited by such converted Rajputs, dissuade them from practising Hindu rites, and persuade them to marry their cousins (real uncle’s daughters which converts persistently refused to do). They equally detested eating cow’s flesh. To induce them to eat beef, he introduced new festivals like Maryam ka Roza and ‘Rot-bot’. On this day, observed on 17 Rajjab, a ‘pao’ of roasted beef placed on a fried bread was distributed amongst relatives and near and dear ones… Such endeavours ruled out the possibility of reconversion and helped in the ‘Islamization’ of neo-Muslims…”"

"A new Muslim invader, Ahmad Shah Abdali, who tried to salvage the Muslim rule, had to give up after several attempts from 1748 to 1767 A.D. His only satisfaction was that he demolished the Harimandir and desecrated the sacred tank with the blood of slaughtered cows, two times in a row. But the Sikh and non-Sikh Hindus rallied round the Khalsa again and again and rebuilt the temple every time."

"They first sallied forth in a body of about 500 persons to attack the market place of the village known as Poorwa, where they slaughtered a cow. With the blood of the animal they defiled a Hindu temple. Then they hung up the four quarters (of the cow) in the different parts of the market place. … The village of Laoghatty in the Nadia district was their next object attack. Here they commenced operations by the repetition of the same outrage to the religious feelings of the Hindus which they had committed at Poorwa, viz, the slaughter of a cow in that part of the village exclusively occupied by Hindu residents. … Titu’s party went on increasing and with growing confidence they went on killing cows in different places, making raids on the neighbouring villages, forcing from the raiyats agreements to furnish grain, compelling many of them to profess conformity to the tenets of their sect…"

"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."

"“Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs may probably agree to pay jiziya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice.”"

"'Everywhere in the lanes and bazaars lay the headless trunks of the slain and the whole city was burning. Many buildings had been knocked down. The water of the Jamuna flowing past was of a yellowish color, as if polluted by blood. The man [a Muslim jeweller of the city, robbed of his all and fasting for several days] said that for seven days following the general slaughter the water had turned yellow. At the edge of the stream I saw a number of huts of vairAgis and sannyAsis [i.e., Hindu ascetic], in each of which lay a severed head with the head of a dead cow applied to its mouth and tied to it with a rope round its neck."

"Qasim first asserts the superiority of Islam over the polytheists by committing a taboo (killing a cow) and publicly soiling the idol (giving the cow meat as an offering)."

"Al-Bîrûnî records: “A famous idol of theirs was that of Multan, dedicated to the sun, and therefore called Aditya. It was of wood and covered with red Cordovan leather; in its two eyes were two red rubies. It is said to have been made in the last Kritayuga… When Muhammad Ibn Alkasim Ibn Almunabih conquered Multan, he inquired how the town had become so very flourishing and so many treasures had there been accumulated, and then he found out that this idol was the cause, for there came pilgrims from all sides to visit it. Therefore he thought it best to have the idol where it was, but he hung a piece of cow’s flesh on its neck by way of mockery. On the same place a mosque was built. When the Karmatians occupied Multan, Jalam Ibn Shaiban, the usurper, broke the idol into pieces and killed its priests…”"

"From thence the King marched towards the mountains of Nagrakote, where he was overtaken by a storm of hail and snow. The Raja of Nagrakote, after sustaining some loss, submitted, but was restored to his dominions. The name of Nagrakote was, on this occasion, changed to that of Mahomedabad, in honour of the late king. Some historians state, that Feroze, on this occasion, broke the idols of Nagrakote, and mixing the fragments with pieces of cows flesh, filled bags with them, and caused them to be tied round the necks of Bramins, who were then paraded through the camp. It is said, also, that he sent the image of Nowshaba to Mecca, to be thrown on the road, that it might be trodden under foot by the pilgrims, and that he also remitted the sum of 100,000 tunkas, to be distributed among the devotees and servants of the temple."

"“On the 1st Rajab 990 [AD 1582] he (Husain Qulî Khãn) encamped by a field of maize near Nagarkot. The fortress (hissar) of Bhim, which is an idol temple of Mahamai, and in which none but her servants dwelt, was taken by the valour of the assailants at the first assault. A party of Rajpûts, who had resolved to die, fought most desperately till they were all cut down. A number of Brahmans who for many years had served the temple, never gave one thought to flight, and were killed. Nearly 200 black cows belonging to Hindûs had, during the struggle, crowded together for shelter in the temple. Some savage Turks, while the arrows and bullets were falling like rain, killed those cows. They then took off their boots and filled them with the blood and cast it upon the roof and walls of the temple.”"

"The Emperor, summoning Muhammad Khalil and Khidmat Rai, the darogha of hatchet-men' ordered them to demolish the temple of Pandharpur, and to take the butchers of the camp there and slaughter cows in the temple' It was done (1705)."

"The waters of Tambraparni which were once white with sandal paste rubbed away from the breasts of charming girls are now flowing red with the blood of cows slaughtered by the miscreants"

"Sacrificing cows is definitely in accordance with the requirements of shariah, rules the Fatawa-i-Rizvia. It cites an ayat from the Quran which does not have a word about the cows, .... It goes on to quote several ulema to the effect that slaughtering cows is an essential and long-standing practice of Islam. If Hindus object to the killing of cows on ‘communal grounds’—the grounds of the Hindus, note, are ‘communal’, the grounds of Muslims are spiritual obedience to Allah!—then it is not right for Muslims to refrain from killing cows. In fact, decrees the fatwa, on every occasion Muslims should keep up what has been prevalent in Islam for so long. If they stop it, they shall be sinners. The fatwa goes on reiterating this point, and returns to emphasize again that if the Hindu asks that cow-killing be stopped on account of his religious point of view, then it is not right for Muslims to stop killing the cows. And if the Hindu cites his false faith to have it stopped, then the Muslims must not stop it. And, warns the fatwa, the Islam of those who agree to do what they, the Hindus, are saying is counterfeit. For if you agree to their proposition you will be strengthening their false religion and doing so is not permissible in shariah. The fatwa proceeds to quote the fatwas which had been issued earlier by the ancestors of Abdul Bari and by Abdul Bari himself: that if someone restrains us from sacrificing a cow, then it becomes obligatory to sacrifice it, because we cannot give up our religious work under duress. Those who advocate the contrary to please the polytheists, the fatwa declares, are out to undermine Islam. They are great sinners, they are mufsid, they are amr-bil-haram, they are the enemies of Islam, they are the dacoits of Muslims, they are brothers of the Devil—Shaitan ke bhai, the workers for the Devil—Mis ke karinde, the enemies of truth, the heirs of the hypocrites. Quoting the Quran, the fatwa declares that they shall be consigned to Hell for ever. So much for persons—like Maulana Abdul Bari—who advocate that Muslims give up slaughtering cows. As for anyone who leaves the sacrifice of cows under their influence, the fatwa declares that he too is the enemy of Allah, the worker for Satan, the abandoner of that which is obligatory, and one fit for the fires of Hell. The continuation of the sacrifice of cows and the prohibition against participation in the meetings of Hindus, declares the Fatawa-i-Rizvia a little later, are both among the necessities of religion. He who declares the former haram and the latter halal— as Maulana Abdul Bari was doing, and as, in regard to meetings, Mufti Kifayatullah was doing—is calumnizing Allah and the Prophet. By the ordinances of the Holy Quran, declares the fatwa, his abode is Jahannum, Hell, and it is incumbent to apply the injunction of kufr upon him. And again: to stop sacrificing cows for the sake of Hindus is haram, declares Fatawa-i-Rizvia, citing as authority the Durr-ul-Mukhtar. And he who does what is haram, it pronounces, sets himself up for the torture of Jahannum, of Hell. He who is guilty of that which is kufr in Fiqh is out of Islam, his wives have become haram for him: he must embrace Islam again, he must go through the nikah again if he wants the status quo ante to be restored. And again: it is proper to continue sacrificing cows. To stop doing so out of consideration for Hindus is haram. Unity with Hindus is haram. And the ones who are advocating this unity (it was in the name of unity and, worse, as an expression of gratefulness that Abdul Bari, etc., were advocating that Muslims give up killing cows) ‘are by their own admission sacrificing the entire life of the Quran and Hadis on idolatry’."

"The fatwa (Fatawa-i-Rizvia) goes on reiterating these arguments, the citations, the assertions—paragraph after paragraph, page after page. ... In Hindustan, it continues, cow slaughter is an act that greatly glorifies Islam. By our fatwas we have proven that here the sacrifice of cows is proper and to abandon it out of regard for Hindus is improper. The fatwa strongly condemns those who say that it should be given up—they are guilty of gunah kabira, it declares. It goes on to quote the fatwas issued by Abdul Wahab, by his ustad, Abdul Hai, and by other ulema of Firangi Mahal—pointing out that these are fatwas which have been included in the compilations of Abdul Hai in which he himself declares that to stop cow slaughter out of regard for Hindus is improper, that to continue it is proper. Cow slaughter is the glory of Islam, the fatwa declares, and the unity which is being observed with Hindus is haram, prohibited, it is qatai haram, wholly prohibited. Cow slaughter is the religious right of a Mussalman, it declares, and a right at that which particularly glorifies Islam. To stop it because of polytheists is to glorify the polytheists, while the sacrificing of cows is the glorification of Islam. This theme is reiterated repeatedly. And the Quran says you should make Allah and the Prophet happy—they have a better right that you appease them than the polytheists have ... unity with the Hindus is haram and to stop cow slaughter because of it is haram..., Even this precis of the fatwa is sufficient to show the steps by which something for which there was at best a permission is transformed by the ulema into a religious duty, the steps by which doing the one thing that hurts another the most becomes a matter of principle, a religious right, an Allah- and Prophet-ordained duty. To give it up would be to give up that which is a long-standing practice in Islam. If we yield on this, they will force on us anything. It would be to strengthen the false religion of the polytheists. It would be to abandon religious work under duress. It would be to do that which we are prohibited from doing—namely to honour kafirs. It will be to degrade Islam. On the other hand, to kill cows is to do the thing which particularly glorifies Islam."

"Cow slaughter in India is a great Islamic practice—(said) Mujaddid Alaf Saani II. This was his far-sightedness that he described cow slaughter in India as a great Islamic practice. It may not be so in other places. But it is definitely a great Islamic act in India because the cow is worshipped in India. If the Muslims give up cow slaughter here then the danger is that in times to come the coming generations will get convinced of the piety of the cow."

"The Turkish [Muslim] invaders entered the town making dreadful din and clamor. Orders were issued clear and terrible: `The soldiers shall march into the town spreading terror everywhere! Cut down the Brahmanas [Brahman priests], wherever they may be-performing homa or milking cows! Kill the cows-even those which are pregnant or with newly born calves!""

"Peace having been made with the Marathas, Najib-ud-daulah had retired to Wazirabad, 10 kilometres from the city situated on the banks of the Jamuna. The Maratha camp was also located near by. Raghunathrao used to bathe in the Jamuna every morning. His way lay near the camp of Najib-ud-daulah. Cows were slaughtered daily in Najib’s camp. Their blood, bones and skins were lying near the route followed by Raghunathrao and other Brahmans who also bathed there. Raghunathrao felt incensed. He asked Malhar to prevail upon Najib to stop cow-slaughter till he was encamped on the Jamuna. Najib replied: “This is a religious matter and I will never abandon it.”"

"Few Muslims were ready to concede the possibility that the rights of Hindus included the ability to stop cow slaughter. Muharram Ali Chisti, editor of Rafiq-i-Hind (Lahore) and subsequently a Congressman, argued in 1888 that “if Muslims were prevented from kine slaughter merely because the practice was prohibited by Hinduism, the Hindu idols and temples would have to be razed to the ground...."

"During the Khilafat movement, Gandhi did what earlier Congress leaders had not dared to do. He appealed to Hindus neither to interfere directly with Muslim cow slaughter nor to attempt to pass laws in their municipalities limiting slaughter. He said that Muslims must be persuaded to abandon slaughter volun¬ tarily. He wrote that while the question of cow protection was “the greatest” facing Hindus, “the only chance Hindus have of saving the cow from the butcher’s knife, is by trying to save Islam from the impending peril [in the Middle East] and trusting their Mussalman countrymen to return nobility, i.e., voluntarily to protect the cow out of regard for their Hindu countrymen. . . . The best and only way to save the cow is to save the Khilafat.”"

"When Araki accomplished the mission of converting people and training and guiding them in the new faith, he addressed the task of converting and guiding the womenfolk. Pious, puritanical, honest and trustworthy dervishes and sufis were selected and the task assigned to them. They were sent to all villages, localities and towns. In fact they reached each and every house. When they came to a homestead, they would get hold of the cow belonging to the housekeeper, kill it and sit down to eat beef in the company of womenfolk and family members. Along with this they administered the recitation of kelima to the womenfolk of the household, and taught them the basics of religion, the pillars of faith and the teachings of Islam. Distinguished vicegerents and sincere dervishes would enter the houses of aristocrats and the elite in order to administer kelima to them and make them eat beef. They would honour them by accepting their expression of repentance and make them promise that they would regularly offer prayers (namaz), observe fasts and other obligations. They also undertook to abstain from what was not permitted (in Islam). These special vicegerents and dervishes spread out in the suburbs of the towns and cities such as Pampur, Kani Pore (?) Shihabuíd-Din Pora etc. Men and women in these areas were apprised of what was permissible and what was not permissible in Islam."

"In fact, 1967 was the best-ever performance by the Bharatiya Jan Sangh before it merged with the Janata Party. What could have led to this sudden spurt of support for Sanghis? In all probability, it was the 1966 police firing at sadhus and other Hindu activists who were protesting outside the Parliament in Delhi to demand a blanket ban on cow slaughter. While the official records of those killed is very low, the popular claims of those killed range between few hundreds to even thousands. Whatever be the real numbers, the fact that it led to the feeling of ‘Hindus under attack’ among a segment of people, in all probability helped the Jan Sangh in the ensuing elections. Firing on kar sevaks at Ayodhya similarly helped the BJP in the 1991 Lok Sabha elections."

"The prime minister sliced into Pakistan, which, she declared, based its existence on stoking hostility to India. Pakistan had long felt that it would get U.S. support no matter what it did, encouraging Pakistani “adventurism and Indophobia.” She complained that Pakistan turned every issue into a clash between Hindus and Muslims: “Indophobia was clothed in the metaphysics of holy wars and the defence of Islam.”"

"The truth is that I spoke clearly to Mr. Nixon [about the situation of the Bangladesh Liberation war]... I told him without mincing words that we couldn’t go on with ten million refugees on our backs, we couldn’t tolerate the fuse of such and explosive situation any longer. Well, Mr. Heath, Mr. Pompidou, and Mr. Brandt had understood very well. But not Mr. Nixon. The fact is that when the others understand one thing, Mr. Nixon understands another. I suspected he was very pro-Pakistan. Or rather I knew that the Americans had always been in favor of Pakistan—not so much because they were in favor of Pakistan, but because they were against India."

"James Mill, author of a popular History of British India, ridiculed the enthusiasm of early Sanskritists such as Jones and the very notion of Indian civilization, since the Indians’ condition was “one of the rudest and weakest states of the human mind” and “the Hindu, like the eunuch, excels in the qualities of a slave.”"

"Thomas B. Macaulay, the first Law Member of the Govemor-General’s Legislature, took up Grant’s ideas on English education, and was also a great admirer of Mill’s. In his notorious 1835 Minute on Indian Education, he maintained that Hinduism was based on “a literature admitted to be of small intrinsic value, … [one] that inculcates the most serious errors on the most important subjects … hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality … fruitful of monstrous superstitions.” Hindus had therefore been fed for millennia with a “false history, false astronomy, false medicine … in company with a false religion”"

"There’s a huge public relations campaign here. Many of our friends in the other party, and including, I must say, some of the nuts in our own party, soft-heads, have jumped on, have completely bought the Indian line. And India has a very great propaganda line."

"They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo – an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as ‘India’, just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British... – that has been their stance.... Caste is real. The working class is real. Being a Naga is real. But ‘India is just a geographical expression!’... And anyone who maintains anything to the contrary is a fascist out to insinuate a unity, indeed to impose a uniformity, where there has been none. That is what our progressive ideologues declaim, as we have seen. In a word, the parts alone are real. The whole is just a construct. India has never been one, these ideologues insist – disparate peoples and regions were knocked together by the Aryans, by the Mughals, by the British for purposes of empire. Anyone who wants to use that construct – India – as the benchmark for determining the sort of structure under which we should live has a secret agenda – of enforcing Hindu hegemony. This is the continuance of, in a sense the culmination of, the Macaulay-Missionary technique. The British calculated that to subjugate India and hold it, they must undermine the essence of the people: this was Hinduism, and everything which flowed from it... India turns out to be a recent construct. It turns out to be neither a country nor a nation..."

"Pakistani textbooks have a particular problem when defining geographical space. The terms "South Asia" and "Subcontinent" have partially helped to solve this problem of the geo-historical identity of the area formally known as British India. However, it is quite difficult for Pakistani textbook writers to ignore the land now known as India when they discuss Islamic heroes and Muslim monuments in the Subcontinent. This reticence to recognize anything of importance in India, which is almost always referred to as "Bharat" in both English and Urdu versions of the textbooks, creates a difficult dilemma for historians writing about the Mughal Dynasties."

"An example is the elaborate plant taxonomy in ancient India. According to the assessment of William Jones, published in 1795, this taxonomy was more advanced than the standard Latin-based ones used by Western botanists. Jones writes: 'I am very solicitous to give Indian plants their true Indian appellations, because I am fully persuaded that Linnaeus himself would have adopted them had he known the learned and ancient language of this country …'"

"It may briefly yet categorically be stated here that the earliest book of the Aryans, viz. the Rigveda, does not mention any of the species of cold-climate trees... On the other hand, all the trees mentioned in the Rigveda, such as the Asvattha (Ficus Religiosa L.), Khadira (Acacia catechu), Nyagrodha (Ficus benghalensis), to name just a few, do not belong to a cold climate but to a tropical one."

"Indian mimicry of British Victorian laws enacted under colonial rule has led to a contemporary controversy about gays. In traditional Indian society, there are no normative sexual categories of 'gay' and 'straight', and therefore being gay is neither banned nor formally sanctioned. It is simply left ambiguous and indeterminate for individuals to figure out for themselves in their own contexts. In the traditional Indian approach, the Western categories of gay/straight are not mutually exclusive, nor are they the permanent essences of a person. From such a perspective, questions such as whether a gay person is 'allowed' to be Hindu appear strange."

"Indian civilization, unlike the Western, has historically had no issues with the idea of homosexuality and transgender peoples. There is an inherent acceptance in the Indian psyche that this is a private matter in which society should not meddle. And there is no injunction against them in Indian religious texts... On the contrary, traditional Indian narratives have had representations of the male and female principles combined in the popular deity, Ardhanareeshwara. The iconography of this deity melds the female and male bodies, transcending the binary of gender and taking the seeker towards the realm of the limitless beyond all categories. There are also sacred stories of people changing their gender."

"But during Mughal and British rules, the Abrahamic views on sexuality were imposed, and the Queer community was marginalized and faced harassment. Even The New York Times has grudgingly acknowledged this fact, although it blamed only the British and remained silent on the role of Muslims.... We must understand that the Western Queer/Trans movement is a revolt against the Abrahamic religions’ bigotry on sexuality.. While it is true that India needs to work harder on the upliftment of the trans community, the Western Marxist approach is counter-productive."

"Actually, dance forms an intrinsic part of worship in the temples. . . . India alone has a concept of a God who dances. Siva is Nataraja, Lord of dancers, who dances in the Hall of Consciousness and weaves into it the rhythm of the Universe. Within His Cosmic Dance are included the Divine prerogatives of Creation, Preservation, Regeneration, Veiling and Benediction . . . Dance in India has been so closely linked with religion, that today it is impossible to think of it divorced from this essential background."

"It is the spirit of Purusha and Prakriti, an expression of evolution of movement, a truly creative force that is handed down the ages. This embodiment of sound and rhythm creating spiritual poetry is called dance or Natya. . . . The first glimpse of the dance comes to us from Siva Himself, a Yogi of Yogis. He shows us the Cosmic Dance and portrays to us he unity of Being. . . . The Cosmic Rhythm of His dance draws around Him ensouled matter, which manifests itself into the variety of this infinite and beautiful universe."

"For the modern physicists, then, Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter."

"In the night of Brahma, Nature is inert, and cannot dance till Shiva wills it: He rises from His rapture, and dancing sends through inert matter pulsing waves of awakening sound, and lo! matter also dances appearing as a glory round about Him. Dancing, He sustains its manifold phenomena. In the fullness of time, still dancing, he destroys all forms and names by fire and gives new rest. This is poetry; but none the less, 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."

"Muslim rulers and nobles always patronised music throughout the medieval times... Indian classical music survived throughout the Sultanate period, although classical Indian dancing almost died out in northern India because it had drifted from the aesthetic sphere into that of the courtesans and the dancing girls."

"Music in India has a history of at least three thousand years. The Vedic hymns, like all Hindu poetry, were written to be sung; poetry and song, music and dance, were made one art in the ancient ritual."

"Then there are ragas and raginis designated for dance. Dance in its art form is as elaborate as music, and is based on Hindu natya-shastra. Sculptures of dancers and musicians carved on ancient and medieval temples, now mostly surviving in south India, bear testimony to their excellence, popularity and widespread practice."

"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."

"Many of the English-educated elites of India accepted the colonial condemnation of their heritage and apologized for its 'primitiveness'. Some of them turned into Hindu reformers, and found the devadasi system detestable for moral and even social-hygienic reasons. However, the devadasis saw their very existence threatened and sent handwritten pleas to the colonial government, explaining the spiritual foundation of Bharata Natyam. They quoted Siva from the Saiva Agamas, saying, 'To please me during my puja, arrangements must be made daily for shudda nritta (dance). This should be danced by females born of such families and the five acharyas should form the accompaniments'. Since these Agamas are revered by every Hindu, the devadasis asked, 'What reason can there be for our community not to thrive and exist as necessary adjuncts of temple service?' They opposed the proposed draconian punishment for performing their tradition, calling the legislation 'unparalleled in the civilized world'. Instead of abolition of their traditional profession, they demanded better education to restore their historical status. They wanted the religious, literary and artistic education as in the past, saying, 'Instill into us the Gita and the beauty of the Ramayana and explain to us the Agamas and the rites of worship'. This would inspire devadasi girls to model themselves after female saints like Maitreyi, Gargi and Manimekalai, and the women singers of the Vedas, such that:. . . we might once again become the preachers of morality and religion. . . . You who boast of your tender love for small communities, we pray that you may allow us to live and work out our salvation and manifest ourselves in jnana and bhakti and keep alight the torch of India's religion amidst the fogs and storms of increasing materialism and interpret the message of India to the world."

"Satyendranath's younger brother, Jyotirindranath's poem composed for the Mela the same year ('Rise! 0 rise! children of Bharat') returned to the theme of resistance by portraying Mother India where she is Sickly and withered, a body of skin and bones,While the mighty demons Subjection and Ignorance Suck her blood and wound her soul And selfish Disunity, the monstrous fiend Her fair body into fragments doth hack! ...Behold, the mother sits captive In ignorant darkness, with feet and hands shackled."

"Bhabananda replied, “We recognize no other mother. ‘One’s mother and birthland are greater than heaven itself.’ But we say that our birthland is our mother. We’ve no mothers, fathers, brothers, friends, no wives, children, houses, or homes. All we have is she who is rich in waters, rich in fruit, cooled with the southern airs, verdant with the harvest fair.”"

"Do not the Hindus all over the country worship the tree? Tulasi, bilva, ashwattha are all sacred to the Hindu."

""Indian government funded in part the work of ISKCON (Hare Krishna) in re-forestation of Vrindavan. Department of environment is supporting temples to maintain sacred groves. Ecological aspects of Sanatana dharma have been included in the school text books of at least one state, UP." ... Ms. Nanda has described how environmentalism in India is often clothed in Hindu language and symbolism. Thus, in trying to protect trees, women tie rakhis, the auspicious red threads which sisters tie around their brothers' wrists on the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan, around these trees."

"The king... breaks the temples and uproots tulsi plants… The bathing in Ganga is prohibited and hundreds of sacred asvattha and jack trees have been cut down."

"They pursued the enemy to the gates and set everything on fire. They burnt down all those gardens and groves. That paradise of idol-worshippers became like hell. The fire-worshippers of Bud were in alarm and flocked round their idols…"

"I very much lament for what has happened to the groves in Madhura. The coconut trees have all been cut and in their place are to be seen rows of iron spikes with human skulls dangling at the points."

"During Covid-19 pandemic, 130 crore Indians took a pledge to be 'Atmanirbhar Bharat'. When I talk about 'Atmanirbhar Bharat', it is about standing on your own feet."

"Self-reliance does not mean that we have everything we need. No country is self-sufficient in all respects... A poor man can be self-reliant while a wealthy person may be dependent on others. Self-reliance means making do with what we have and cutting out what we do not and cannot have."

"...our objective is to combine growth not only with social justice but also with self-reliance. We have a long way to go before we can rest content with our achievement on any one of these fronts."

"India is an old country, but a young nation, we are impatient. I am impatient and I too have a dream of an India— strong, independent, self-reliant..."

"We look for self-reliance, not autarchy."

"My objective is to make India truly self-reliant."

"Our vision of a self-reliant economy should be of an economy which can meet all its import requirements through exports, without undue dependence on artificial external props such as foreign aid. I suggest to this august House that this is precisely the vision of self-reliance as bequeathed to us by Jawaharlal Nehru as elaborated in the Third Five Year Plan, and translated to the realities of today’s world."

"...we lack the self confidence to see ourselves as a developed nation, self reliant..."

"At least don't buy Ganesha idols from China"

"Under the self-reliant India campaign, the country's goal is to make the nation the world's biggest military power on its own and develop a modern military industry here"

"The true history of the agrarian agitation in Chhota-Nagpur has yet to be written. The task has so far been attempted by partisans only. Munda children of the German Mission are even now sedulously taught the gospel of hate in the class-room of their schools. One of the school text-books entitled ‘Nelem Odo Senem’-Look and Walk-Which was published by the Munda Sabha of the G. E. L. Mission, Chhota-Nagpur, in 1909, tells how the ancestors of the Munda reclaimed the jungles and converted the country, by their labour, into a smiling garden. It tells the Munda boy how his forefathers successfully drove away all wild animals from the country and also how enemies who were worse than the wild enemies came in as inter-loppers and robbed them of the fruit of their toil. In further states that in spite of various laws framed by the English to restrain these foreigners, as are still being despoiled by Hindus and Mussalmans. The schools in which these doctrines are inculcated are largely subsidised by our Government.”"

"There is no doubt that the great success of the Christian missions in obtaining converts is due largely to the secular benefits which the Mundas, thus, obtained."

"People from the Munda community inhabit central and northeastern states. The freedom fighter, Birsa Munda, who fought against British rule belonged to this community. He was influenced by a Brahmin whom he regarded as his guru. He learnt the Hindu epics and was inspired by their legendary heroes. He became a vegetarian when he met a Vaishnava saint who taught him Bhakti. Birsa Munda also raised his voice against Christian missionaries and the oppression of landlords and British administrators. Many Vanavasi communities claim Kshatriya ancestry."

""The Mundas call themselves Horoko, which means 'men'." (p.43)"

""The tribals of Chotanagpur are an endogamous tribe. They usually do not marry outside the tribal community, because to them the tribe is sacred. The way to salvation is the tribe." (p.43)"

""Sarna spirituality is marked by a strong belief in one God. A careful study of their religious beliefs and ceremonies shows that they believe in a Supreme Being whom they call Singbonga which literally means Sun God." (p.46)"

""Tribal religions generally believe in one God, in a Supreme Being who goes by such names as the Great Spirit, the Great One, the Creator, the Mighty Spirit (...), etc. Although at times God is identified with the rain, light, dawn, fire, water, hills, the Supreme Being of the tribal people is usually independent of the material or astral world. (...) He has dominion over the entire universe." (p.44)"

""Singbonga is eternal. (...) He is also omniscient and omnipresent. (...) Singbonga of Sarna religion is a gentle god, not a malignant deity. He is an all-pervading benevolent power, ever intent on doing good to humanity." (p.46)"

""However, Singbonga's relation with the tribe is not one of individual love, but of an all-embracing tribal love. The tribe is the apple of his eye and yet he keeps himself a little aloof from it. He has no favorites; the pahan [= priest] is no more privileged in his eye than the ordinary villager. The Sarna peoples' allegiance to Singbonga is therefore also tribal, an allegiance to the visible and invisible tribe." (p.47)"

""The tribe is the temple of Singbonga and he wants it undefiled. The basic belief that Singbonga created the tribe and that therefore it must be preserved in its integrity justifies in the eyes of the Mundas all the regulations and taboos that bind them in this regard. (...) These include exogamy [between families], endogamy [within the tribe], and monogamy in marriage and conjugal fidelity. Not only the offenders themselves but the entire community is appropriately punished by Singbonga for the non-observance of these great ethical values. This almost exclusively tribe-oriented moral code with little personal conscience to enlighten and guide puts the Munda tribe in a world of its own, self-contained, self-sufficient and turned in upon itself, whose whole existence was tied to traditions with little change in the course of time." (p.47) "The Sarna people do not have a written code of moral law. Their idea of right and wrong comes from their tradition. Tradition is their measure of truth. Their way to salvation is the tribe."

"Hence they must see that they remain in the tribe. For them evil is essentially any offense that would break up their tribal status. There are two kinds of offenses: ethical and tribal. Ethical offenses include all aberrations committed consciously and which harm not so much the individual but others. Singbonga may punish such offenses by causing illness or misfortune to the tribe. (...) The offense against the tribe is the most tragic offense for the Sarna people, because their way to salvation is the tribe and this offense usually excludes them from the tribe." (p.52-53)"

""The punishment is not carried over to the life beyond the grave. The idea of repeated rebirth is borrowed from the Hindu religion." (p.53)"

""The domain of tribal belief also extends to the other supernatural beings which are above mankind but are less than the Supreme Being. They are usually called spirits but at times they are also invoked as 'deities' or 'gods'. Belief in spirits is one of the most important characteristics of tribal religions. In fact the tribal world is a world of spirits." (p.44)"

""Besides the Singbonga the Mundas generally worship a host of other spirits including their own ancestors. But Singbonga occupies the highest position in the hierarchical order of spirits." (p.46)"

""Cult or worship is mostly directed to the spirits and the ancestors." (p.44-45)"

""The spirits of the Mundas are hierarchically ordered. The first in order of dignity comes the Burubonga, Marang Buru or Pat Sarna. This spirit is a mountain-god or the highest hill or rock in the neighbourhood. He is represented by no visible object." (p.48)"

""Next in order come the Hatu Bongako or the Village spirits. (...) They are worshipped by the Pahan on behalf of the whole village at specific times in the sacred grove or the Sarna of each village." (p.48)"

"The third group of spirits in the Munda pantheon are the Ora Bongako or the House-spirits. These are the spirits of the deceased ancestors of each family. They are worshipped in the house-sanctuary called Ading, by the head of every family. Sometimes they are referred to as Haparomko (the ancestral spirits). Ancestor worship finds an important place in the religious belief of the Mundas. They believe that after the death of a person his spirit/shade (roa/umbul) has no house to live in. As an outcast it roams about in the neighborhood of the grave. After an odd number of days, the Umbul-ader (homebringing of the shade) ceremony is performed by which the 'shade' of the deceased is brought into the ading of the house and enshrined there. Henceforth the man's spirit is called no longer umbul but Ora Bonga (House Spirit). This important ceremony is a way of re-introducing the deceased member into the tribe. It is believed that they in turn are the real benefactors of the family or the tribe to which they belong."

""They keep in touch with other bongas and pray to Singbonga for the welfare of their household and the tribe. They are remembered and offered their due worship and sacrifice at all important occasions of life." (p.48) More explicitly: "The sacrifice they offer is mostly intercessory" (p.49), and their feasts "all refer to Singbonga as provider and creator of the tribe". (p.49)"

""Besides Singbonga, the Munda pantheon includes a number of other deities and spirits whom they call Bongas. (...) There are both benevolent spirits (Manitabongas) and malevolent spirits (Banitabongas). (...) Accordingly the benevolent spirits are worshipped and the malevolent spirits are only appeased or propitiated." (p.47-48)"

""Singbonga, unlike spirits, is worshipped for his own sake. His purity demands that he be offered sacrifices only of things that are white. Hence he is given sacrifices of white goats, white fowls, white gulainchi flowers, white cloth, sugar, milk, etc." (p.47)"

""The world of any tribal group is stamped with sacredness, religiosity and reverence for nature. (...) This is the view of the Sarna tribal people as well. They are totally involved in the world, they communicate with the spirituality that surrounds them. They love nature, they communicate with it and are attached to it. Nature is their way to the supernatural." (p.51)"

""The Asurs were like the bad angels who revolted against God. They were greedy iron smelters, who even after repeated warning from Singbonga kept on smelting day and night. Because of their disobedience Singbonga destroyed all the male members of the tribe." (p.55)"

"Police Officers alone, and none else, can give evidence as regards the circumstances in which a person in their custody comes to receive injuries while in their custody. Bound by ties of a kind of brotherhood, they often prefer to remain silent in such situations and when they choose to speak, they put their own gloss upon facts and pervert the truth. The result is that persons, on whom atrocities are perpetrated by the police in the sanctum sanctorum of the police station, are left without any evidence to prove who the offenders are."

"With great power comes greater responsibility."

"This government does not try to hide anything. Adequate instructions have been given to prevent custodial deaths in future. Henceforth, I assure you that no custodial death will happen in Tamil Nadu."

"By and large, in Nagpur, the 1948 disturbances were caused by a mix of anti-Hindu Sabha, anti-R.S.S. and anti-Samyukta Maharashtra feelings, but the common thread was anti-Maharashtrian Brahman [sic] hatred. While not all Brahmans [sic] were Chitpavan, a large number were, and the victims who were of other Brahman [sic] jatis were treated as though they were Chitpavans."

"The first consequence of the murder was immediate: Nathuram Godse’s own community, the Chitpavan Brahmins, was targeted for mass murder. The comparison with the mass killing of Sikhs by Congress secularists after Indira Gandhi’s murder is fairly exact, except that the 1984 massacre is well-known (even eclipsing the memory of the larger number of Panjabi Hindus murdered by Sikh separatists in the preceding years), whereas this one has been hushed up. The New York Times first drew attention to it, reporting 15 killings for the first day and only for the city of Mumbai (then Bombay). In fact, the killing went on for a week and all over Maharashtra, with VD Savarkar’s younger brother as best-known victim. Arti Agarwal, who leads the research in “Hindu genocide”, estimates the death toll at about 8,000. On mass murders, estimates are often overdramatised, but here we must count with a countervailing factor: The government’s active suppression of these data, as they would throw a negative light on Gandhism. But research on this painful episode has now started in earnest, and those presently trying to get at the real figures include Savarkar biographer Vikram Sampath."

"This line of anti-Brahmin rhetoric on the model of anti-Semitism comes full circle with the following allegation, originally made in 1971 by K.K. Gangadharan, a Leftist sociologist from Maharashtra working in Christ College in Kanpur, and since then adopted by the likes of V.T. Rajshekar: the Chitpavan Brahmins, ... which took a leadership role in the struggle against the Moghuls, the British Raj and Congress secularism, are so “arrogant” and “fanatical” because, unbeknownst to other Indians, they actually have Jewish ancestors!"

"As regards the laws, they are scarcely observed at all, for the administration is absolutely autocratic, but there are books of law, which are in charge of their lawyers, the Kazis. Their laws contain such provisions as hand for hand, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; but who will excommunicate the Pope? And who would dare to ask a Governor “Why do you rule us this way or that way? Our Law orders thus.” The facts are very different, although in every city there is a kachhahri, or royal court of justice, where the Governor, the Diwan, the Bakhshi, the Kotwal, the Kazi, and other officers sit together daily, or four days in the week. Here all disputes are disposed of, but not until avarice has had its share. All capital cases, such as thefts, murders, or crimes are finally disposed of by the Governor, if the criminals are poor and unable to pay, and the sweepers drag them out to execution with very little ceremony. In the case of other offences the criminals are seldom or never executed; their property is merely confiscated for the Governor and Kotwal. Ordinary questions of divorce, quarrels, fights, threats, and the like, are in the hands of the Kotwal and the Kazi. One must indeed be sorry for the man who has to come to judgment before these godless ‘unjudges’; their eyes are bleared with greed, their mouths gape like wolves for covetousness, and their bellies hunger for the bread of the poor; everyone stands with hands open to receive, for no mercy or compassion can be had except on payment of cash. This fault should not be attributed to judges or officers alone, for the evil is a universal plague; from the least to the greatest, right up to the King himself, everyone is infected with insatiable greed, so that if one has any business to transact with Governors or in palaces, he must not set about it without “the vision of angels’, for without presents he need expect very little answer to his petitions. Our honourable employers need not deign to be surprised at this, for it is the custom of the country."

"Although the notion of absolute power admits of nothing which can be sanctified from its grasp, whence the king, as in other despotic States, may, if he pleases, become heir to any man in his kingdom: yet custom has not established this right to him in Indostan; and these perhaps are the reasons why neither the Moors or Gentoos have been subjected to it. 1. All the political institutions of the Gentoos are so blended with the idea of religion, that this is generally effected where these are concerned. The softness of manners which these people receive from the climate, has fixed all their attention to the solaces of a domestic life. There are not more tender parents, or better masters, in the world: such a people will make wills in favour of their offspring: and the prince finds himself restrained by policy from establishing a right so utterly shocking to the nature and disposition of the subject. He is likewise restrained by religion: the name of God invoked in the testament of a Gentoo, gives it as sacred an authority as with those who have better notions of a deity; and the Brachman is too much interested, as father of a family, to sanctify a practice which would affect his own property. Thus the Gentoo princes were never seen to assert this right, excepting when avarice had got so far the ascendant, as not only to confound all their notions of policy, but even to make them look on religion as the prejudice of education. 2. The Moors, in the first outrages of conquest, doubtless possessed themselves of all kinds of property: but when the Gentoos would not be converted, and were left to the observance of their own rites, the right of testaments was continued, and still subsists amongst them. The Gentoos, by their subtilty and application, find many means of gaining wealth under the Moors; and this wealth they devolve by will to their male children. The obstacles which these may meet with in taking possession, will be explained hereafter. 3. The idea of being fellow-conquerors; the complacency arising from perpetual victories; the immense wealth which these conquests afforded; might have been the causes which prevented the first Mahomedan princes of Indostan, from establishing amongst those of their own religion, this utmost effort of absolute power. They were contended with knowing that they had at all times the power to seize, without declaring that they intended to inherit every man’s property. 6. …The different methods of inheritance amongst the Gentoos, are settled by their religion, according to the different casts by which they are distinguished. In general, the females are recommended to the care of the brothers; and these are commonly ordered to divide equally: sometimes first cousins, especially if born under the same roof, share equally with the brothers: sometimes the first wife of the deceased is intrusted with the management of the whole estate during life – a custom attended with no consequences prejudicial to the children, as she cannot enter into a second marriage. It is always recommended by the parent, that the house, if in a way of trade, be not divided; and as surely it happens, that divisions ensure amongst the heirs."

"…There are no digests or codes of laws existing in Indostan: the Tartars who conquered this country could scarcely read or write and when they found it impossible to convert them to Mahomedanism, left the Gentoos at liberty to follow their own religion…"

"Imitation has conveyed the unhappy system of oppression which prevails in the government of Indostan throughout all ranks of the people, from the highest even to the lowest subject of the empire. Every head of a village calls his habitation the Durbar, and plunders of their meal and roots the wretches of his precinct: from him the Zemindar extorts the small pittance of silver, which his penurious tyranny has scraped together; the Phousdar seizes upon the greatest share of the Zemindar’s collections, and then secures the favour of his Nabob by voluntary contributions, which leave him not possessed of the half of his rapines and exactions: the Nabob fixes his rapacious eye on every portion of wealth which appears in his province, and never fails to carry off part of it: by large deductions from these acquisitions, he purchases security from his superiors, or maintains it against them at the expense of a war. Subject to such oppressions, property in Indostan is seldom seen to descend to the third generation."

"That the legislature discriminates against Hindus is not news—I have provided enough examples. Plenty more exist of minority appeasement at the cost of the majority, but what is to be done when the judiciary singles out the Hindus? What is the recourse then? What is the recourse when you find that the fine lady who stands atop our temples of justice belligerent, when you find her sword that is pointing to the skies blunted and her blindfold perforated, when you find her scales rusted? What is the recourse? There is none. Because while the Supreme Court decides to remove discrimination from Islam, it is stopped from doing so by the Parliament. When it decides to remove perceived discrimination from Hinduism, it is encouraged to do so by the Parliament."

"Kalaripayat, literally "the way of the battlefield, still survives in Kerala, where it is often dedicated to Mahakali. The Kalari grounds are usually situated near a temple, and the pupils, after having touched the feet of the master, saluted the ancestors and bowed down to the Goddess, begin the lesson. Kalari trainings have been codified for over 3000 years and nothing much has changed. The warming-up is essential and demands great suppleness. Each movement is repeated several times, facing north, east, south and west, till perfect loosening is achieved. The young pupils pass on to the handling of weapons, starting with the "Silambam", a short stick made of extremely hard wood, which in the olden times could effectively deal with swords. The blows are hard and the parade must be fast and precise, to avoid being hit on the fingers! They continue with the swords, heavy and dangerous, even though they are not sharpened any more, as they are used . without guard or any kind of body protection; they whirl, jump and parry, in an impressive ballet. Young, fearless girls fight with enormous knives, bigger than their arms and the clash of irons is echoed in the ground. The session ends with the big canes, favourite weapons of the Buddhist traveller monks, which they used during their long journey towards China to scare away attackers."

"Tipu also issued a new system of coinage, fashioned again by his fixation with Islam. He engraved the following words on the obverse of these coins: “the faith of Ahmad (Muhammad) is proclaimed to the world by the victories of Haidar struck in Pattan [Srirangapattana] in the year Jalu or 1199 Hijri.” On the reverse were engraved, “He [it is unclear whether it refers to God or Tipu] is the only Sultan, the just one the third of Bahari in the year Jalu, and third of the reign.”.. He gave the names of Muslim saints to coins minted in gold and silver. To copper coins, he gave Arabic and Farsi names, and named them after stars. Pagoda was the name of a coin that was in common circulation during that period. Tipu renamed Pagoda to Ahamadi because it was one of the names of the Prophet. Further, he gave the name Sadiq to a coin whose value was two Pagodas. Tipu’s reasoning? Sadiq was the name of the First Caliph. According to this new numismatic nomenclature, the one-paisa coin was called Zehra,the two-paise, Outmaani, and so on. In several instances, he gave new names for coins that he himself had renamed earlier: Farooqi, Jaffar, and Imami, for instance. There was also a Rupee named Hyder."

"Fabri added a comparison of Indus signs with symbols on the punch-marked coins, bringing out striking parallels between the two.... Overall, Fabri’s conclusion was: We are able to recognize a large number of Indus script pictograms among the punch-marks published by previous writers—too large a number, indeed, to ascribe it to mere coincidence."

"It is hardly necessary to say that August 15 was hailed with joy all over India, and no words can adequately describe the tumultuous scenes of wild rejoicings witnessed in every city and every village. Lord and Lady Mountbatten, driving in state, were greeted with resounding cheers by the enthusiastic crowds that lined the streets. This heralded a new era of goodwill between India and Britain. Stories of many hard and bitter struggles between India and Britain, and of animosities between the Indians and the British fill the pages of this work. Let it end with a note of goodwill, trust, and confidence which manifested itself on the streets of Delhi on 15 August, 1947."

"Much of the Hindu attitude and approach to mathematics was certainly conveyed to Western Europe through the Arabs. The algebraic methods formerly considered to have been invented by Al-Khowarizmi can now be seen to stem from Hindu sources."

"I have decided first to consider the majority of the authors who up to now have written about [algebra], so that I can fill in what they have missed out. They are very many, and among them Mohammed ibn Musa [Al-Khwarizmi], an Arab, is believed to be the first [...] I believe that the word “algebra” came from him, because some years ago, Brother Luca [Pacioli] of Borgo San Sepolcro of the Minorite order, having set himself the task of writing on this science, as much in Latin as in Italian, said that the word “algebra” was Arabic [...] and that the science came from the Arabs. Many who have written after him have believed and said likewise, but in recent years, a Greek work on this discipline has been discovered in the Library of our Lord in the Vatican, composed by a certain Diophantus of Alexandria, a Greek author [...] Antonio Maria Pazzi and I have translated five books (of the seven) [...] In this work we have found that he cites the Indian authors many times, and thus I have been made aware that this discipline belonged to the Indians before the Arabs."

"As in the rest of mathematical science, so in trigonometry, were the Arabs pupils of the Hindus […]"

"That he [Al-Khwarizmi] should have borrowed from Diophantus is not at all probable; … It is far more probable that the Arabs received their first knowledge of algebra from the Hindus, who furnished them with the decimal notation of numerals, and with various important points of mathematical and astronomical information."

"However, it is not unlikely that the Arabs, who received from the Indians the numeral figures (which the Greeks knew not), did from them also receive the use of them, and many profound speculations concerning them, which neither Latins nor Greeks know, till that now of late we have learned them from thence. From the Indians also they might learn their algebra, rather than from Diophantus."

"By comparison, the Sanskrit and Greek traditions were absorbed in a rather piecemeal fashion. In the one case there was a fragmentary rendering of Hindu literature and scientific works (channeled through Sind, until the Abbasids lost their grip on the province). Indian numerals, arithmetic, mathematics, philosophy and logic, mysticism, ethics, statecraft, military science, medicine, pharmacology, toxicology (works on snakes (sarpavidya) and poison (visavidya)), veterinary science, eroticism, astronomy, astrology and palmistry were transmit­ ted. Chess and chausar games were brought from India. We have a reference by an Arabic author from Andalusia to an Indian book on tunes and melodies. Indian fables and literary works are reflected in the Thousand and One Nights. Al-Biruni, before he came to India, had some Indian works in his library which were translated into Arabic under the early Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur (754-775) and the Barmakid vazirs of Harun ar-Rashid; amongst these were the Brahmasiddhanta or Sindhind and the Pahcatantra. When, in 1020, Al-Biruni began his study of Indian astronomy from the Sanskrit originals he was to find that the early works were still held in the same high esteem.13 To an ap­preciable extent, Sanskrit philosophy had already come to the attention of the Sasanid Persians and its influence in the Islamic world was sometimes mediated by Sasanid schools. ‘It was recognized among the Khusros (Akasira) of Persia that wisdom (hikma) originally came from al-Hind’.14 In Islam however Indian influences submerged under the tide of Greek and Hellenistic learning, falsafa and science, from the ninth century onwards."

"Nearly all the evidence of Harappan relations with the West has been brought to light in foreign territories (the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, Iran) and not in the Indus territories."

"O Soma, from every side pour forth four seas filled with a thousand-fold riches."

"It is clear however that the products of India which entered long-distance trade were of a great, seemingly infinite, variety and that they were quite commonly expensive or precious."

"The collection of honey is depicted in three paintings at Pachmarhi and one at Bhimbetka. A painting in the Jambudwip shelter at Pachmarhi shows a man driving out bees and a woman approaching the beehive with a pot. Both are standing on ladders. In a second Pachmarhi painting at Imlikhoh shelter a woman is driving away the bees. In a third painting at Sonbhadra shelter two men climbing a scaffold are surrounded by bees. The painting at Bhimbetka shows a man touching a beehive with a round-ended stick. The man holds a basket on his back and appears to be suspended by a rope. There are three men below him, including one standing on the shoulders of another man."

"Here it may be mentioned that Aurangzeb had the dubious distinction of renaming more towns and forts than perhaps any other Muslim ruler. It seems he wanted to erase the memory of the past history of these places and give them a new beginning, coinciding with the ‘revival’ of Islamic faith, practices and Shari‘at laws under him. He thus renamed Nasik as Gulshanabad, Karnal as Qamarnagar, Devgarh as Islamgarh, Toran as Fatuh-ul-Ghaib, Nagpur as Bhagpur, DhÁrur as Fatahabad, Vrindavan as Mominabad, Mathura as Islamabad, Rampura as Islampur, and sometime in the last decade of his reign, he renamed Banaras as Muhammadabad. More instances of renaming of towns by him can be cited."

"Aurangzeb’s preposterous moves to rename Varanasi as Muhammadabad, as also Mathura as Islamabad, were as colossal a failure as his attempts to wipe off the faith of the Hindus. These new names ‘never found favour with the people, and only survived for a short period in official documents. It is also found in the coins of this and succeeding reigns, Benares having been a mint town from the days of Akbar’."

"The truth is that when the Mughals ruled India, they crossed all limits of cruelty. They martyred Guru Arjan Dev Badshah Ji, Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji, Guru Gobind Singh Sahib Ji’s younger brother, and even the elder one was also martyred. So this is a very big story of cruelty. I believe that when the country got independence, even before that, during British rule, and later when the Congress party came to power, they showed a completely different face of the Mughals. They named all the roads and big educational institutions after them. It was a matter of shame for this country that the rulers who martyred our Gurus, who demolished temples and built mosques here, were given so much respect in history. So this truth should have come to the fore. The truth should be known to our youth and children about the atrocities committed by the Mughals here. So, if they make changes in the syllabus and try to bring out the truth, then I would definitely welcome it."

"We are stronger than before, we are fiercer than before, and remember, the game has just begun. You can't stop Republic. Republic won't stop. Republic is unstoppable."

"These people formed cabals.. When I was fighting corruption you all went to the Information and Broadcasting minister... [he told me] in the meeting the biggest point of conversation is you because the minister is shouting at us why the media is putting pressure on us.. [he told] it is the boy in Mumbai who is doing all of this, shall we Mr Minister bring you his head on a plate? ... these are the spineless editors of Lutyens whose problem is now that more people are watching Republic. Well they will because all of you cheated and lied to the people of India for far too long!"

"Congress and its allies have shamed democracy once again. Blatant misuse of state power against Republic TV & Arnab Goswami is an attack on individual freedom and the 4th pillar of democracy. It reminds us of the Emergency. This attack on free press must be and WILL BE OPPOSED."

"“This incident is not just limited to the stifling of the freedom of the press, but it is an infringement of personal freedom and liberty granted to every citizen of the country. When the people who are meant to protect citizens become the very people that citizens need protection from, the collective might of democracy needs to enforce itself to demand fairness,” the country’s first nationalistic digital media association. “The police is well within its right to constitute action against any party it thinks has erred, however, the process of the law has to be followed. This incident only appears to be a zenith in the witch-hunt that was launched by the government against Republic TV over the past few weeks.” “We, as a group representing digital news orgs are especially dismayed that if such high-handedness can be displayed towards a legacy media, smaller digital outfits could simply be crushed by the might of the state to ensure that dissenting voices are muzzled. However, such attempts will be opposed and fought by IDMA, for the sake of the right of the media, its right to be free and fair, and for the citizen’s civil liberties,” the statement added."

"Birth is not the cause, my friend; it is virtues, which are the cause of welfare. Even a Chandala (untouchable) observing the vow is considered a Brahmana by the gods."

"Christianity, which has sprung from Jewish roots and can only be understood as a plant that has come from this soil, represents the counter-movement to every morality of breeding, race or privilege: – it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence: Christianity the revaluation of all Aryan values, the victory of Chandala values."

"I cannot oversee whether the Semites have not already in very ancient times been in the terrible service of the Hindus: as Chandalas, so that then already certain properties took root in them that belong to the subdued and despised type (like later in Egypt). Later they ennoble themselves, to the extent that they become warriors […] and conquer their own lands and own gods. The Semitic creation of gods coincides historically with their entry into history."

"What a yes-saying Aryan religion, born from the ruling classes, looks like: Manu’s law-book. What a yes-saying Semitic religion, born from the ruling classes, looks like: Mohammed’s law-book, the Old Testament in its older parts. What a no-saying Semitic religion, born from the oppressed classes, looks like: in Indian-Aryan concepts; the New Testament, a Chandala religion. What a no-saying Aryan religion looks like, grown among the dominant classes: Buddhism."

"The Chandala-s must have had the intelligence and even the more interesting side of things to themselves. They were the only ones who had access to the true source of knowledge, the empirical. Add to this the inbreeding of the castes."

"It makes the Jews look like a Chandala race which learns from its masters the principles of making a priestly caste the master which organizes a people."

"The priest is our chandala—he should be condemned, starved, and driven into every kind of desert."

"All innovators of the spirit bear for a time the pallid, fatalistic sign of the Chandala on their brow."

"In a far-fetched departure from Manu’s use of the term, [Nietzsche] relates the concept of Chandala to the psycho-sociological origin of the Jewish national character..."

"More serious is Nietzsche’s uncritical reliance on the flawed translation of the text by Jacolliot, an amateur openly denounced by leading philologists like Friedrich Max Muller. Uncritical reading of this text led Nietzsche to quote mistranslations and later insertions in support of the claim concerning the Chandala (low caste) origins of the Semites, used to attack Christianity in TI and AC. Elst goes on to highlight what Nietzsche missed or omitted in his reading of the text, including not just the actual politics and institutions of the caste system, but also some striking affinities with his own views and teachings. Despite these philological blunders and misjudgements, however, Nietzsche seems to have landed on his feet after all; for in Elst’s view, he did succeed in grasping Manu’s view of man and society."

"Let us recall Adi Shankaracharya’s unequivocal rejection of social exclusions which he felt were not in line with Advaita’s tenets of inclusion and universalism. He says: “....I am that which pervades as a witness in the bodies of all living beings right from Brahma to the tiny ant. One who has the deep conviction that ‘I am That, not any of the objects of perception’, he is a Guru, whether a Chandala or a Brahmana...” (Venkataraman 2014:107)"

"In the Pañcatantra story of the greedy holy man Devasharma, who is cheated of his gold coins by a rogue who comes to win his trust in the garb of a disciple, the unsuspecting guru utters these words while initiating him as his disciple: “Whether he be a śūdra or any other, a caṇḍāla or a sannyāsī, once he is initiated with the Śiva-mantra, smeared with sacred ash, he becomes as auspicious as Śiva Himself.” (Kale 2012:29)"

"If a person has attained the firm knowledge that he is not an object of perception, but is that pure consciousness which shines clearly in the states of waking, dream and deep sleep, and which, as the witness of the whole universe, dwells in all bodies from that of the Creator Brahma to that of the ant, then he is my Guru, irrespective of whether he is an outcaste or a Brahmana. This is my conviction."

"M. Berkelhammer led an international team to a cave in Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, ‘among the wettest locations on Earth with an annual average precipitation in excess of 11,000 mm’, and studied the isotopic variations in a stalagmite: Oxygen 18 isotope as an index of precipitation, and the Uranium-Thorium method for absolute dating of the stalagmite, which went back almost 12,000 years for a growth of nearly 2 m. The results highlighted a ‘dramatic event ... ~ 4000 years ago when, over the course of approximately a decade, isotopic values abruptly rose above any seen during the early to mid-Holocene and remained at this anomalous state for almost two centuries.’ This suggested either ‘a shift toward an earlier Indian Summer Monsoon withdrawal or a general decline in the total amount of monsoon precipitation.’ The study’s ‘tight age constraints of the record show with a high degree of certainty that much of the documented deurbanization of the Indus Valley at 3.9 kyr B.P. occurred after multiple decades of a shift in the monsoon’s character....’"

"To a considerable extent the process [of weakening of the political fabric of the Indus civilization] must have been linked to the hydrographic changes in the Sarasvati-Drishadvati system."

"Dales, who excavated Balakot, suggested that ‘a sudden rise in the Arabian Sea coastline of West Pakistan apparently took place sometime around the middle of the second millennium. This resulted in a disastrous increase in the already serious floods in the major river valleys. ... The Harappans were forced to migrate gradually to more fertile territory. There is now incontrovertible archaeological evidence that the major population shift was to the southeast into the area of the Kathiawar [= Saurashtra] peninsula....’"

"Human societies are ultimately dependent on the climate and environment they live in. Climate change and environmental degradation very likely contributed to the decline of the Harappan Civilization from the twenty-first century BCE; that is a lesson which, in the twenty-first century CE, we ought to ponder on."

"Convincing evidence, collected from both archaeological and natural science investigations, refutes the popular theories of appreciable climatic change in the South Asian area during the past four to five thousand years ... Climate has thus been practically eliminated as a major factor in the environmental fortunes of the Harappan civilization."

"More recently, the U.S. archaeologist Gregory Possehl supported this assessment: ‘The climate of this region [Greater Indus Valley] was not markedly different in the third millennium BC from the one we have today.’"

"The Indian archaeologist Dilip K. Chakrabarti also argues that ‘there can be no question of aridity = decline of civilization correlation’ and complains that ‘there seem to be too many [environmental determinists] today.’"

"The Indus settlements spanned a diverse range of environmental and ecological zones; therefore, correlation of evidence for climate change and the decline of Indus urbanism requires a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between settlement and climate across a substantial area."

"A climatic event cannot be blamed simplistically for [Harappan] collapse and de-urbanisation, but Quaternary science data make it clear that we cannot accept a view of climatic and environmental stability since the mid-Holocene in the region (as promoted by Possehl ...)"

"For a Civilization so widely distributed, no uniform ending need be postulated. Circumstances which affected it in the sub-montane lands of the central Indus may well have differed widely from those which it encountered south or east of the Indian Desert and in the watery coastlands of the Rann of Kutch. Later archaeologists often disagreed, finding little or no evidence for a climate significantly different in Harappan times from today’s. And the evidence at present available indicates that such indeed was the case."

"The Brahmin… claims to be a representative of the Aryan race and he regards the rest of the Hindus as descendants of the non-Aryans. The theory helps him to establish his kinship with the European races and share their arrogance and their superiority. He likes particularly that part of the theory which makes the Aryan an invader and a conqueror of the non-Aryan races. For it helps him to maintain his overlordship over the non-Brahmins."

"The theory of the Aryan race set up by Western writers falls to the ground at every point… the theory is based on nothing but pleasing assumptions and inferences based on such assumptions… Not one of these assumptions is borne out by facts… The originators of the Aryan race theory are so eager to establish their case that they have no patience to see what absurdities they land themselves in… The Aryan race theory is so absurd that it ought to have been dead long ago."

"The distinction between Aryan and un-Aryan on which so much has been built seems on the mass of evidence to indicate a cultural rather than a racial difference."

"Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third hand and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes we shall, I think, discover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is based upon nothing more sound or true than a foundation of loosely massed conjectures. We shall question many established philological myths,—the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial and inimical distinction of Aryan and Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogenous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a “henotheistic” Vedic naturalism; the ingenious and brilliant extravagances of the modern sun and star myth weavers. Western Philology has converted it [the word arya] into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values...."

"These premises developed in response to the colonial need to manipulate the Indians’ perception of their past. The need was felt most strongly from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, and an elaborate racist framework, in which the interrelationship between race, language and culture was a key element, slowly emerged as an explanation of the ancient Indian historical universe. The measure of its success is obvious from the fact that the Indian nationalist historians left this framework unchallenged, preferring to dispute it only in some comparatively minor matters of detail."

"The systematic mistranslation of “dark people” etc. as “the dark-skinned aboriginals subdued by the white Aryan invaders and their caste Apartheid” for almost two centuries is one of the grossest mistakes in scholarship, and extremely rich in consequences."

"It is not far-fetched to perceive a metaphorical intention behind the use of words like “black”, similar to that in other languages... When it is said that Agni, the fire, “puts the dark demons to flight”, one should keep in mind that the darkness was thought to be filled with ghosts or ghouls, so that making light frees the atmosphere of their presence. And when Usha, the dawn, is said to chase the “dark skin” or “the black monster” away, it obviously refers to the cover of nightly darkness over the surface of the earth."

"[R]ace theories conquered the intellectual scene, fitting neatly with the Europe-to-India scenario for the spread of Indo-European. It all fell into place: the Aryans had been white Nordic people who, with their inborn superiority, had developed a culture and technology which allowed them to subdue less advanced races: dark-haired Mediterraneans and West-Asians, and dark-skinned Indians. The linguistic "aryanization" of India by white Aryan invaders from Europe formed a complete case study of all that the upcoming racist worldview stood for."

"The projection of 19th-century colonialism and of the earlier subjection of the Amerindians by European invaders onto ancient Indian history has provided an illustration or justification to an array of modern political ideologies, all of a more or less sinister or destructive character."

"The whole edifice of the “racial Aryan”, notorious through its Nazi application but equally popular in British colonial discourse and its Indian copycats, was based on a simple mistranslation."

"The fact that racial interpretations arose in the 19th century is not surprising , given the prevalence at the time of quasi-scientific attempts to provide a justification for racially based European imperialism , and the well known scramble of the European powers to divide up the non-European world. Moreover, the British take-over of India seemed to provide a perfect parallel to the assumed take-over of prehistoric India by the invading ‘Aryans’."

"In general, the assumption of racial self- and external identification, as well as the alleged parallel with the English conquest of India for the time of the alleged Indo-Aryan immigration to India, is extremely questionable."

"The racial interpretation of the of the notions light/white and dark/black... must be considered dubious. Where there is sufficient context for interpretation, we find that the notions can at least equally well be read as an ‘ideological’ distinction between the ‘dark/black’ world of the dāsas/dasyus and the ‘light/white’ world of the āryas.”"

"There are a whole series of standard opinions in the Indological literature, which are regarded as expressions of proven research results and are adopted in this capacity from one book to another to this day, without anyone believing that they need to be checked again against the source material and/or in the context of newer research and hypotheses. One of these standard opinions is the view that the population that the Arya encountered when they immigrated to India was radically different from them, especially in terms of their external appearance."

"That the racial theory of Indian civilization still lingers is a miracle of faith. Is it not time we did away with it? The first effort to find direct evidence of the physical features of the Indian aborigines in the Sanskrit texts dating from the time of the Big Bang that brought Indian civilization into existence... boiled down to a matter of noses."

"The image of the "dark-skinned savage" is only imposed on the Vedic evidence with a considerable amount of text-torturing."

"The racial theory of Indian civilization was formed in a period after the ending of slavery in Europe and the United States, in the aftermath of which there grew up a racialized division of labour, combined with social segregation on the basis of race."

"The Queen-Empress entirely concurs in the necessity and wisdom of a policy of religious impartiality; but she cannot help feeling that the Brahmins are those who incite the people against us, and that the Mahomedans are the real supporters of the British rule; and she does think that they should “be protected from insults and disturbance in their very peaceful and quiet worship, which is so opposed to idolatry.'"

"There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won’t go. For me, India is such a place. When I first visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colors, smells, tastes, and sounds. It was as if all my life I had been seeing the world in black and white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant technicolor."

"To judge of the past from the present, let us take the English nation in India. It has held India for a longer period than the Greeks did Bactria from the time of Alexander to that of As'oka, but yet it has produced no appreciable effect on the architecture of its neighbours. The Bhutanese and the Sikimites have not yet borrowed a single English moulding. The Nepalese, under the administration of Sir Jung Bahadur, are not a whit behind-hand of As ́oka and his people; Sir Jung went to Europe, which As'oka never did; still there is no change perceptible in Nepalese architecture indicative of a European amalgamation. The Kashmiris and the Afghans have proved equally conservative, and so have the Burmese. But to turn from their neighbours to the people of Hindustan : these have had intimate intercourse with Europeans now for over three hundred years, and enjoyed the blessings of English rule for over a century, and yet they have not produced a single temple built in the Saxon, or any other European style. Thus the conclusion we are called upon to accept is that what has not been accomplished by the intimate intercourse of three centuries, and the absolute sovereignty of a century, in these days of railways, and electric telegraphs, and mass education, was effected by the Greeks two thousand years ago simply by living as distant neighbours for eighty years or so."

"The greatness of this people was attested by "the gigantic grandeur and durability of Egyptian and Indian architecture in contradistinction to the fragile littleness of modem buildings. This consideration will enable us," he continued, "by analogy to grasp the idea . . . that all these famous nations sprang from one stock, and that their colonies were all one people directly or indirectly, of Indian origin.... ""

"What is now required is a carefully and scientifically edited Dictionary or Gazetteer of the Castes, and Tribes, and social distinctions of British India... The English Government has steadily ignored Caste, as far as the administration of public affairs is concerned... I am glad to hear that there is a prospect of an Ethnological Survey of British India."

"Intensive studies of individual tribes are very important and I think ASI (ie. the Anthropological Survey of India) will always help scholars studying tribal society in different parts of the country. We should not leave the study of Nadars of Tamil Nadu or Patidars of Gujarat to foreign scholars. We should study them ourselves. This is very very necessary particularly because their intellectual and political perspectives are different from our own."

"Turn we now to a sepoy on the line of march. We will suppose him in the ranks. We have seen his means of subsistence; we know how he feeds, how he is clothed, and how he can undergo his duties in garrison. Now let the reader patiently follow me a little longer, and I will show him the miseries, the privations, and the fatigues to which he is exposed while marching. Before starting, a sepoy generally receives an advance of pay; perhaps he has it in full, or only half, according to the pleasure of the commanding officer, or the distance he has to go. With this advance of pay he has to clear himself from the station (for probably he has incurred debts), besides paying an advance equal to one half, or altogether, as the case may be, for the means of conveying his goods and chattels, as well as his numerous family, some of whom, particularly the young and aged, are unable to walk. Exclusively of all this, he has to provide the means of sustenance for himself and dependants, and that with a total of perhaps two rupees in his pocket, for a journey of about two or three or four hundred miles! How can he do this? Impossible! He must starve and so must his family; at all events, they must from sheer necessity feed themselves upon the most economical plans that they can possibly devise. Curry and rice are luxuries they dare not think of. Plain boiled rice is not so expensive, and of that they sometimes do manage to have a treat, about two mouthsful each. Bread or biscuits, or chuppatees (cakes made of rice flour), are quite out of the question. Butter-milk with a green chili after it, and now and then a bit of salt fish by way of a relish, is generally their sole food; and parched peas, or raw chenna (or grain), forms a kind of variety which they chew, resembling the cud of bitter poverty in every sense of the word. Upon this sort of diet have they to support nature, and be fit for the duties to which they are called in the camp and on the route. The sepoy has to take his tour of guard once every three days (sometimes oftener), exposed at nights to the damp chilly dew, and perhaps be drenched with rain, being obliged to remain so for hours together during the whole night, and march the next morning without change of clothes, and without any food or other description of creature comfort, save a pot full of that abominable trash, buttermilk. On arriving at the next stage, he has no comfortable breakfast, no hot coffee, no dram, nothing except some cold rice and water of the preceding day to satisfy his hunger. All this time he has to carry his pack, firelock, and accoutrements; his chaco, his pouch full of ball cartridges; the body emaciated and rendered feeble from want of proper sustenance; how is it possible for the wretched man to go through all this without breaking down?"

"Of these [sepoys], the temper was extremely doubtful. By far the greater number of them were Hindoos, and perhaps one half brahmins any one of them, if he had been his own master, would have rejoiced in an opportunity of shedding his life's blood in a quarrel with the Mussulmans, and of the mob who attacked them, the brahmins, yoguees, gossains, and other religious mendicants, formed the front rank, their bodies and faces covered with chalk and ashes, their long hair untied as devoted to death, showing their strings, and yelling out to them all the bitterest curses of their religion, if they persisted in urging an unnatural war against their brethren and their gods. The sepoys, however, were immoveable. Regarding the military oath as the most sacred of all obligations, they fired at a brahmin as readily as any one else, and kept guard at the gate of a mosque as faithfully and fearlessly as if it had been the gate of one of their own temples. Their courage and steadiness preserved Benares from ruin."

"[I]n 2002 the Indian Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), an apolitical Hindu charity run by the nicest of Hindu Americans, became the target of a damaging smear campaign by US-based Indian Communists, the “Campaign to Stop Funding Hate”. It was enough to point out the RSS links to some of the projects that were being supported by them, and then to add – what else? – Golwalkar’s “race pride” quote, and numerous academics and reputable Non-Resident Indians were found who were willing to sign a petition aiming to cut off corporate philanthropy to the IDRF. Moreover, imagine that you are an American managing a company or leading an institution and you receive this letter cautioning you against this IDRF, which has been made a beneficiary of your philanthropy budget at the suggestion of a Hindu employee. Obviously, your confidence in this particular Hindu will be shaken, considering his “fascist” connections, no less, and his abuse of your confidence by making you unwittingly support this fascist charity. This may even have an impact on his employment status and promotion chances. So, RSS carelessness with fighting off all the Nazi-mongering libel has damaged not just the IDRF and all the people benefiting from its work, but also every other Hindu connected to it in any way."

"What India really needs is an investigation into the flow of money from the pharma companies to the CROs [clinical research outsourcing companies] to the doctors."

"Seventy per cent of the funding of the World Health Organisation comes from commercial entities…. As long as the WHO is getting industry funding or funding from vested interests, it should not be considered independent and the Indian government should ignore its advice. Those commercial entities are not interested in your health, they will make money by deception."

"I think that the states in India that broke free from the WHO saved hundreds of thousands of lives."

"The earliest account based on Megasthenes occurs in Diodorus (1st century B.C.). Referring to the Ganges, he (II.37)3 writes: "Now this river which at its source is 30 stadia broad, flows from north to south, and empties its waters into the ocean forming the eastern boundary of the Gangaridai, a nation which possesses the greatest number of elephants and the largest in size. Owing to this, their country has never been conquered by any foreign king; for all other nations dread the overwhelming number and strength of these animals. Thus Alexander the Macedonian, after conquering all Asia, did not make war upon the Gangaridai, as he did on all others; for when he had arrived with all his troops at the river Ganges, and had subdued all the other Indians, he abandoned as hopeless an invasion of the Gangaridai when he learned that they possessed four thousand elephants well trained and equipped for war.""

"Indeed Diodorus himself in another passage (VI.XCIII)1 tells us in general where Alexander would have touched it: "he had obtained from Phegus a description of the country beyond the Indus. First came a desert which it would take twelve days to traverse; beyond this was the river called the Ganges with a width of thirty-two stadia and a greater depth than any other river; beyond this again were situated the dominions of the nation of the Prasioi and the Gandaridai, whose king, Xandrames, had an army of 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants trained and equipped for war.""

"Curtius (IX.2)2 writes in the course of his account: "Next came the Ganges, the largest river in all India, the farther bank of which was inhabited by two nations, the Gāngāridae and the Prasii...""

"Plutarch's treatment (LXII)3 of the situation reads: "...its farther banks were covered all over with armed men, horses and elephants, for the kings of the Gandaritai and the Praisiai were reported to be waiting for (Alexander)...""

"This situation of theirs becomes even clearer in a passage from Diodorus elsewhere (XVIII.6):6 "(India) is inhabited by very many nations, among which the greatest of all is that of the Gandaridai against whom Alexander did not undertake an expedition, being deterred by the multitude of their elephants. This region is separated from farther India by the greatest river in those parts (for it has a breadth of thirty stadia), but it adjoins the rest of India which Alexander had conquered...""

"The next version from Megasthenes comes in Pliny. Pliny (IV.22)2 touches on the Gangaridai after making an observation about the Ganges in mid-career: "...it flows out with a gentle current, being at the narrowest eight miles, and on the average a hundred stadia in breadth, and never of less depth than twenty paces (one hundred feet) in the final part of its course, which is through the country of the Gāngārides. The royal city of the Calingae is called Parthalis. Over their king 60,000 foot soldiers, 1,000 horsemen, 700 elephants keep watch and ward 'in procinct of war'.""

"The process of vaccination consists in injecting into the skin the liquid that is obtained by applying the discharge from the body of a small-pox patient to the udder of a cow… Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time, not to be found even among the so-called savage races of the world. Its supporters are not content with its adoption by those who have no objection to it, but seek to impose it with the aid of penal laws and rigorous punishments on all people alike. ... (Part II, Chapter VI Contageous Diseases: Small-Pox)"

"I cannot also help feeling that vaccination is a violation of the dictates of religion and morality. [Pg 108]The drinking of the blood of even dead animals is looked upon with horror even by habitual meat-eaters. Yet, what is vaccination but the taking in of the poisoned blood of an innocent living animal? Better far were it for God-fearing men that they should a thousand times become the victims of small-pox and even die a terrible death than that they should be guilty of such an act of sacrilege. (Part II, Chapter VI Contageous Diseases: Small-Pox)"

"I have no doubt in my mind that vaccination is a filthy process, that it is harmful in the end and that it is little short of taking beef."

"India is an example of a country where there's plenty of things that are difficult there -- the health, education, nutrition is improving and they are stable enough and generating their own government revenue enough that it's very likely that 20 years from now people will be dramatically better off and it's kind of a laboratory to try things that then when you prove them out in India, you can take to other places."

"What India really needs is an investigation into the flow of money from the pharma companies to the CROs [clinical research outsourcing companies] to the doctors."

"Since 2005, the number of clinical trials in India has ballooned to 1,600 studies involving over 150,000 research subjects. Health campaigners in India have mounted a vigorous campaign calling for stricter regulation of an industry that has seen over 2,000 research participants die between 2007 and 2013. ... India’s health minister recently reported to the Indian parliament that to date, less than twenty-five family members have received compensation from foreign drug companies for loss of life. Families received an average of about $3,000 per individual – a pittance."

"Perhaps most alarming of all, PATH did not implement any system for recording major adverse reactions to the vaccines, known technically as Adverse Events Following Immunization, or AEFIs, something legally mandated for large-scale clinical trials... In 2010, the Indian Council of Medical Ethics admitted that its own ethical protocols had been flouted in permitting the trials."

"The NTAGI secretariat has been moved out of the ministry to the office of Public Health Foundation of India and the 32 staff members in that secretariat draw their salaries from the BMGF (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). There is a clear conflict of interest — on one hand, the BMGF funds the secretariat that is the highest decision making body in vaccines and, on the other, it partners the pharma industry in GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization). This is unacceptable."

"In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. In regions where children are vaccinated multiple times, the non-polio acute flaccid paralysis rate is up to 35 times higher than international norms. The non-polio acute flaccid paralysis rate in a given year correlates to the cumulative doses of oral polio vaccine received in the previous 3 years."

"In 2009 and 2012, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Gates’s partners GSK and Merck, on 23,000 girls 11–14 years old in remote provinces of India. ... At least 1,200 of the girls in Gates’s study—1 in 20—suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died—about 10x the US death rates for cervical cancer, which almost never kills the young. India’s Federal Ministry of Health suspended the trials and appointed an expert parliamentary committee to investigate the scandal. Indian government investigators found that Gates-funded researchers at PATH committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying illiterate parents, and forging consent forms. Gates provided health insurance for his PATH staff but not to any participants in the trials, and refused medical care to the hundreds of injured girls. The PATH researchers targeted girls at ashram paathshalas (boarding schools for tribal children), to dodge the need to seek parental consent for the shots. They gave the girls “HPV Immunization Cards” that were printed in English, which the girls couldn’t read. They did not tell the girls that they were part of a clinical trial and instead hoodwinked them with the lie that these were “wellness shots” that would guarantee “lifelong protection” against cancer. That was not true. PATH conducted the trials in impoverished rural areas that lacked mechanisms for tracking the adverse effects and had no system for recording major adverse reactions to the vaccines, something legally mandated for large-scale clinical trials...."

"Notwithstanding such concerns about the high costs and meager benefits of the vaccine, Gates, through his surrogates at GAVI, PATH, and WHO successfully arm-twisted the Indian government in 2007–8 into introducing the hepatitis B vaccines. GAVI pushed WHO to change the official policy to a universal recommendation, meaning that even countries with low disease burdens would be required to vaccinate. GAVI hoped this would reopen the Indian markets. WHO obligingly changed its recommendation to include universal immunization with hepatitis B vaccine for all countries, even those where HCC was not a problem. The Indian government obediently adopted WHO’s recommendation."

"In 2012, the British Medical Journal wryly noted that polio eradication in India “has been achieved by renaming the disease.” That year, the disillusioned Indian government dialed back Gates’s vaccine regimen and evicted Gates’s cronies and PIs from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously. After squandering half of its total budget on the polio epidemic—at Gates’s direction—the WHO reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is happening because of Gates’s vaccine program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to the vaccines he promoted. Polio had disappeared altogether from each of those nations until Gates reintroduced the dreaded disease with his vaccine... As the British Medical Journal reported in 2012, “the most recent mass polio vaccination programs [in India], fueled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, resulted in increased cases [of polio].”"

"In 2010, the Indian Council of Medical Ethics found that the Gates group had violated India’s ethical protocols. In August 2013, a special parliamentary committee excoriated PATH, stating that the NGO’s “sole aim has been to promote the commercial interests of HPV vaccine manufacturers who would have reaped windfall profits had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the UIP [universal immunization program] of the Country.” According to Dr. Colin Gonsalves, senior counsel of the Supreme Court of India, The Indian Parliament formed a committee, and it was to be a rather surprising move, because you generally don’t often have such a high level inquiry into matters affecting poor people. And that was such an extraordinary report. I don’t think the Indian Parliament has ever come out with such a scathing report. And the government officials came out and said, “We shouldn’t have authorized this, were sorry, and we’re not going to allow them again”—and now they are back, doing their same old tricks again."

"To overcome such meddling from India’s prying medical community, in 2005 Gates funded, through GAVI, a four-year, $37 million study of mass vaccination with Hib jabs in Bangladesh intending to showcase the vaccine’s benefits. GAVI’s Bangladesh study backfired, showing no advantage from Hib vaccination. In response, a formidable coterie of superstar international health experts—all of them, coincidentally, from Gates-funded organizations WHO, GAVI, UNICEF, USAID, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and CDC—issued a deceitful proclamation that fraudulently claimed that the Bangladesh study proved a Hib jab protects children from “significant burden of life-threatening pneumonia and meningitis.” … Based on Gates’s orchestrated guile, WHO in 2006 took the official position that the “Hib vaccine should be included in all routine immunization programmes.” Once again, the Indian government caved in to Gates and mandated Hib vaccines in India, where Hib invasive disease was nearly nonexistent. In self-congratulatory articles, GAVI boasted triumphantly of its role in rescuing the Hib vaccine project in India after the Bangladesh study proved the vaccine a worthless waste of money. GAVI’s article notes that, since there was little burden from Hib disease in India, it had been a great challenge to gin up support for WHO’s recommendation. GAVI bragged—in technocratic argot—that it twisted WHO’s arm to revise WHO’s Hib vaccine policy from a weak permissive statement to a firm recommendation calling for universal vaccine introduction in all countries. WHO’s volte-face dragooned reticent Indian health officials to recommend the useless vaccine."

"Puliyel protests that the Gates Foundation has privatized and monetized international public health policy, transforming WHO recommendations into effective mandates and compelling poor countries to pay annual tribute to foreign Pharma overlords. Puliyel told me that India and other Asian nations are now effectively compelled to administer the vaccine and to increase Hib uptake targets, “irrespective of an individual country’s disease burden, notwithstanding of natural immunity attained within the country against the disease, and not taking into account the rights of sovereign States to decide how they use their limited resources.” He adds that “The mandate and wisdom of issuing such a directive, for a disease that has little potential of becoming a pandemic, needs to be questioned.” Dr. Puliyel’s commentary in the BMJ denounced Gates and GAVI for pushing Hib vaccine in developing countries and for falsifying the characterization of the research data in their press release: “The directive has come after a number of failed attempts to convince the scientific community of the need for this vaccine in Asia.” Puliyel described the HiB saga as “a case study on the visible and invisible pressures brought to bear on governments to deploy expensive new vaccines.”"

"It would be impossible to convey to any one who has never been in the tropical climate the beauty, the luxury of such a scene; at such an hour, the air becomes so pure and balmy, the atmosphere so highly rarefied, the moon and stars shine with a brilliance unknown in our hemisphere. The most slender leaf seen between you and the deep blue sky is accurately defined; the waving boughs of the coca [coconut?] that seem at intervals to stir from some internal impulse are so beautifully contrasted with the thick foliage of the mango, glossy as the holly tree. The hum of grasshoppers is ceaseless, and the banyan trees are white with doves whose soft note is perpetually heard. The glorious sun is now above the horizon…it is difficult to describe such a morning in downright prose, unless it were that of Walter Scott’s novels…"

"I sat down to give you an account of the weather and climate, which insensibly led me to the consequences of it: every thing but cold is in extremes here, the heat is intense, the rains floods, the winds hurricanes, and the hailstones I dare not tell you how large, lest you should think I have the licence of a traveller. But what I always hold with reverence and awe and at the same time with pleasure, is the lightning; not an evening passes without it; it is not that offensive glare of light I have been used to see, but a beautiful fire, which plays amongst the clouds, and passes from one part of the heavens to another in every direction, and in every variety of vibration."

"Manu, however, has one verse that in connection with this subject is of interest, and deserves to be translated, though till now it never has been rendered into English. I refer to ii. 17, and translate in paraphrase: "The country divinely meted out by the rivers Sarasouti and Ghuggar, and lying between them, is where the (Rig, etc.) Veda arose, and hence is called brahmavarta or 'home of the Veda' in the tradition of the learned.""

"No fruits are produced from alms-giving or donations, no fruits from sacrifices, no fruits from Homa ceremonies, and no fruits from good and bad deeds. To those who are dead, this world exists not. To those who are living, another world does not exist. No results are produced from what is done to mother or father. There are no sentient beings of spontaneous generation."

"Who knows that the soul exists? Of what use is this knowledge? Who knows that the soul does not exist? Of what use is this knowledge?"

"There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor any soul in another world, Nor do the actions of the four castes, orders, produce any real effect. The Agnihotra, the three Vedas, the ascetic's three staves, and smearing one's self with ashes, Were made by Nature as the livelihood of those destitute of knowledge and manliness. If a beast slain in the Jyotishṭoma rite will itself go to heaven, Why then does not the sacrificer forthwith offer his own father?"

"Under the guise of religion the Brahmin has his finger in every thing, big or small, which the Shudra undertakes. Go to his house, to his field or to the court to which business may invite him, the Brahmin is there under some specious pretext or other, trying to squeeze out of him as much as his cunning and wily brain can manage. The Brahmin despoils the Shudra not only in his capacity of a priest, but does so in a variety of other ways."

"When are we to get into the right path of devotion to god? When I ask this, the Brahmins dub us as atheists. Believing these Brahmins and their hirelings, the ignorant people raise the cry against us that god is in danger, religion is in danger! Is behaving in this barbarous way, theism or atheism? Whatever it be, we will not be cowed down by their hindering activities. Whatever we feel right, we will boldly say. We say Hindu religion and gods are dreadful diseases. Unless they are effaced out of existence our people cannot and country would not prosper. We say what we feel."

"Of all the living creatures man is the most intelligent. It is man who created god, religion, philosophy and spiritualism. It is also said that extra ordinary men have actually succeeded in realising god. Some are said to have become one with god itself. I venture to ask, why even such greatmen have not found out a solution for all these follies of the world."

"By claiming the monopoly Over the unknown Religions also split the people apart And spread hatred among them."

"Let us see how I carry on: one friend asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, “During your last days, you will begin to believe”. I said, “No, dear Sir, it shall not be”. I will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. For selfish motives, I am not going to pray. Readers and friends, “Is this vanity?” If it is, I stand for it."

"The characteristic feature of modern civilisation is the progressive triumph of science over superstition, reason over faith. The struggle had been going on ever since the dawn of history."

"Religion is bound to be liquidated by science, because scientific knowledge enables mankind to answer questions, confronted by which in its childhood, it was compelled to assume super-natural forces or agencies. If the assumption really answered the questions, then religion would have precluded the rise of science. But religion did not explain natural phenomena. It simply created a new set of problems, which overshadowed the original problems of existence."

"The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organized religion, in India and elsewhere has filled me with horror, and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it."

"Religion, as I saw it practised, and accepted even by thinking minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Christianity, did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it lay a method of approach to life’s problems which was certainly not that of science. There was an element of magic about it, an uncritical credulousness, a reliance on the supernatural."

"I want ethics to rule and idealism to grow. That can be achieved only when belief in god and fate is done away with and consequently the theistic philosophy of life is changed. In positive terms, I want atheism, so that man shall cease to depend on god and stand firmly on his own legs. In such a man a healthy social outlook will grow, because atheism finds no justification for the economic and social inequalities between man and man."

"If the scientist and the Rishi resemble each other in their inspiration, they also differ radically from each other in their conception of truth. Truth for the Rishi is essentially mystic - that is, intuitive, absolute and transcendental. Scientific truth is discursive or rational in structure, empirical in content and secular in character."

"When I was young, I had to memorise parts of the Bible and perform rituals. It was perhaps this experience that turned me into an atheist. When I grew up, I saw people using religion to earn money and fool others. This made my belief all the more stronger. I don't, however, thrust my beliefs and ideologies on anyone."

"I lay curled up at night, unable to sleep, trembling with fear, praying to every god I knew to let him live, just let my father come back to us. But he too left, leaving behind only us children. That was when I decided, gods who don’t answer such prayers need not be called again."

"I believe in only one god. My conscience."

"One cannot question Puranas or the religions. But Science is all about asking questions. Though we know all this, we are still scared to question it. So, we say that education should take us in the direction of fulfilling this objective of scientific thinking."

"Science is always humble. It never lays claim to the final word. It is religion that asserts, ‘I have understood it all, I have figured the universe out, now do as I say.’ Science believes in testing objects and incidents, and searching tirelessly for solutions to unsolved problems. Scientists are not to be praised for being right; they are to be praised for trying to state principles rigorously and thoroughly. Science remains objective even while it extends or overturns the work of its own giants."

"Life is about exploration: I don’t believe in God; spirituality means nothing much to me. I enjoy exploring things I don’t have answers for."

"Those belong to different faiths and those who were not part of any religion had taken active part in our freedom struggle. This nation belongs to all people and all sections of Indian society in equal measure."

"All these religions, all the religions without exception, belong to the dark ages. Their roots are in the dark ages. You bring the dark age with you. Your umbilical cord has not been cut from the dark ages."

"When it comes to the forced inculcation of religion and the resulting abuses of children in the name of religion, the United Nations, all of its affiliated organizations, and almost all national governments remains steadfastly silent."

"I am an atheist by belief, but I did not come to atheism through rebellion against the Hinduism I was born into. Rather, through the influence of my atheist father, whose particular brand of non-religious rationalism was, I now realise, in keeping with the spirit of the late 19th-early 20th century Prabodhan or renaissance in Maharashtra."

"We reject the Hinduization programme in toto for two reasons. One, Hinduism has never been a humane philosophy. It is the most brutal religious school that the history of religions has witnessed. The Dalitbhujan castes of India are the living evidence of its brutality. Second, even if Hinduization expressed a desire to humanize itself in future, there is no scope for this to happen, since the history of religion itself is coming to an end."

"By sixteen, I was a borderline rabid atheist. Then, things cooled down, and I decided not to be angry. I finally settled down for a rational view of the world because for me it was not necessary to demolish god."

"I am an atheist, but being so doesn't stop me from respecting those who believe in religion. Every individual has the right to lead his or her life according to their wish and I respect that. I don't try to influence anyone or force my opinion on them. Also, my beliefs cannot be influenced by anyone."

"I'm not overtly religious, but I do bow my head and offer my respects everytime I pass a holy place. My dad always said more than learning any form of organised religion, it was essential to be a good human being first. I'm not an atheist, I'm more of an agnostic."

"My father raised me without a religion and to question everything. When you are raised without a religion who automatically question everything. He never told us don’t believe in God, we just imbibed what we saw. It was more about questioning thing and trying to apply logic or scientific evidence to things. Those things are important because something has to be provable before you can say that it is a fact otherwise it is a theory. Billions of people get by on faith and it is strange the comfort the people who have faith have, it is very difficult for people who don’t have faith to get that."

"I don’t follow any religion. I am an atheist. So where will you get me out of? How would you get somebody out of a place they don't exist in the first place!"

"The Indian atheist activists with whom we have spent time - as opposed to those often characterized dismissively by activists as metropolitan-based ‘talking shop’ humanists or ‘armchair atheists’ - do not simply ‘believe’ in materialism. They seek to debunk or ‘expose’ what they consider to be pernicious supernatural beliefs via skilled deployments of materials."

"At a time when the British showed no particular enthusiasm for cleanliness, Indian women for example introduced British men to the delights of regular bathing. The fact that the word shampoo is derived from the Hindi word for massage, and that it entered the English language at this time, shows the novelty to the eighteenth-century British of the Indian idea of cleaning hair with materials other than soap. Those who returned home and continued to bathe and shampoo themselves on a regular basis found themselves scoffed at by their less hygienic compatriots: indeed it was a cliché of the time that the British in Bengal had become ‘effeminate’."

""The fact that even smaller towns and villages had impressive drainage systems” remarks Kenoyer, “indicates that removing polluted water and sewage was an important part of the daily concerns of the Indus people.”"

"A surprising spirit of cleanliness is to be observed among the Hindoos: the streets of their villages are commonly swept and watered, and sand is frequently strewed before the doors of the houses."

"Cleanliness was literally next to godliness in India; hygiene was not, as Anatole France thought it, la seule morale, but it was made an essential part of piety. Manu laid down, many centuries ago, an exacting code of physical refinement. “Early in the morning,” one instruction reads, “let him” (the Brahman) “bathe, decorate his body, clean his teeth, apply collyrium to his eyes, and worship the gods.” The native schools made good manners and personal cleanliness the first courses in the curriculum. Every day the caste Hindu would bathe his body, and wash the simple robe he was to wear; it seemed to him abominable to use the same garment, unwashed, for more than a day. “The Hindus,” said Sir William Huber, “stand out as examples of bodily cleanliness among Asiatic races, and, we may add, among the races of the world. The ablutions of the Hindu have passed into a proverb.”"

"The Brahman usually washed his hands, feet and teeth before and after each meal; he ate with his fingers from food on a leaf, and thought it unclean to use twice a plate, a knife or a fork; and when finished he rinsed his mouth seven times. The toothbrush was always new—a twig freshly plucked from a tree; to the Hindu it seemed disreputable to brush the teeth with the hair of an animal, or to use the same brush twice: so many are the ways in which men may scorn one another."

"You would, my Arabella, be enraptured at the extreme neatness of even the meanest attendant; but besides the beauty and the virtue of cleanliness, it is the only fence in the East against putrid diseases. That unerring guide, Nature, who teaches the people of the North to fortify themselves with furs against their inclement seasons, bids the inhabitants of Indostan be correctly delicate in their persons, and personal attire: to which the circumstance of all the servants being Gentoos not a little contributes; for diurnal immersion in the river Ganges is one of the strict articles of their religion, at the same time that it is a general benefit to the Europeans."

"Purity means cleanliness of mind and body; the latter is effected by the use of water etc. No nation in the world is as cleanly in the body as the Hindu, who uses water very freely."

"For their part, Indians and Asians considered Westerners puzzlingly dirty. To some extent, it was a matter of merocrine sweat glands, which Caucasians have in profusion while Asians have few or none. (Because of this, they can still find even clean Westerners very smelly.) Partly it was that Christianity’s emphasis on the spirit encouraged a certain neglect and disparagement of the physical side of life, and Christian teachings, unlike those of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, ignored hygiene. And partly the difference between West and East was that much of Europe took a long hiatus when it came to regular washing, roughly from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth or nineteenth century, and non Westerners who encountered Europeans in those centuries were often stunned by their abysmal hygiene."