Women from India

"I would say if you have a dream, follow it."

"There are so many people who are arguing or fighting over issues which don't have much relevance. We must all realise it is not worth it."

"Take the time to figure out how to get there. The quickest way may not necessarily be the best. The journey matters as much as the goal."

"The coolest thing for me is the experience of floating and not feeling my weight. And hanging by a window just after sunset and watching the stars in the big black dome of the sky as the earth moves underneath."

"It was starting to get dim outside, so you got to see your own reflection. And there is the Earth, and you can still see the Earth’s surface and the dark sky overhead. And I could then see my reflection in the window and in the retina of my eye the whole earth and the sky could be seen reflected. So I called all the crew members one by one and they saw it, and they said, 'oh wow'."

"YOU ARE YOUR INTELLIGENCE."

"As you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone's service is revealed as one's own service. Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one's own Self in every one of them."

"Enquire: 'Who am I?' and you will find the answer. Look at a tree: from one seed arises a huge tree; from it comes numerous seeds, each one of which in its turn grows into a tree. No two fruits are alike. Yet it is one life that throbs in every particle of the tree. So, it is the same Atman everywhere. All creation is That: There is beauty in the birds and in the animals. They too eat and drink like us, mate and multiply; but there is this difference: we can realize our true nature, the Atman. Having been born as human beings, we must not waste this opportunity. At least for a few seconds every day, we must enquire as to who we are. It is no use taking a return ticket over and over again. From birth to death, and death to birth is samsara. But really we have no birth and death. We must realize that."

"The Vedas are but sparks from They eternal Light. Thou dost symbolise the heavenly couple, Kama and Kameshvari who are dissolved together in all-permeating Bliss Supreme and signified by Nãda and Bindu, when differentiated for keeping up Thy Lila. Do Thou dispel the fears of the world. I seek refuge in Thee."

"From 1976 through 1980 I corresponded with the great woman saint of India, Sri Anandamayi Ma. I had decided to write her as a friend of mine had recently done so and received a reply. To my surprise a letter came back from her within a few months. Swamis Atmananda and Nirvananda helped with my communications. I planned to visit Ma in India but somehow could not get the resources together to bring it about. I also wrote a few articles for their magazine Ananda Varta. Contact with Ma inspired me more into a Vedantic and Hindu mold. Her energy would come in waves, almost like an electrical force, encouraging me to deeper practices. Ma’s energy opened up devotional potentials for me, not merely for the Goddess but also for Shiva and Rama. I began to look into Bhakti Yoga, chanting and devotional meditation. Images of Hindu deities appeared in mymind."

"Sri Ma was often lost in bhava samadhi and other forms of trance-like ecstasies. Once she stayed in samadhi for five days without any response to outside stimuli. When asked about it, she replied, “It is a state beyond all conscious and supra-conscious planes – a state of complete immobilization of all thoughts, emotions and activities, both physical and mental, a state that transcends all the phases of life here below.” She was stabilized in sahaja samadhi, the natural state of effortless abidance in the Self regardless of one’s external circumstances. ... Sri Ma’s realization embraced all opposites. Though distinguishedly beautiful in appearance and motherly by temperament, she could equally display the more masculine, impersonal aspect of God. In her advanced years, she would still express the lustre, innocence and charm of youth encompassed by an aura of the wisdom of the ancients."

"In her later years, Sri Anandamayi Ma was treated like the spiritual queen of India, often visited by Kamala Nehru, wife of the first Prime Minister of India. She became the protector and confidante of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, cabinet members and countless government officials. She was universally revered by millions of sadhus, saints and devotees. In January, 1982, she was selected by the sadhus of the Haridwar Kumbha Mela as their Ishta Devata, or beloved personal form of God, and rode a caparisoned elephant to lead the procession of Naga Babas marching toward the holy Ganga. Gopinath Kaviraj, the great savant-saint of Banares, called her Adya Shakti, the incarnation of the highest Spiritual Energy. And Swami Sivananda, founder of the Divine Life Society of Rishikesh, offered her the ultimate accolade, calling her “the purest flower the soil of India has ever produced.”"

"I have no sense of pleasure or pain, and I stay as I have always been. Sometimes He draws me outside, and sometimes He takes me inside and I am completely withdrawn. I am nobody, all of my actions are done by him and not by me."

"As you do not feel the weight of your head, of hands, and of feet … so do I feel that these persons are all organic members of THIS BODY; so I don't feel their pressure or find their worries weighing on me. Their joys and sorrows, problems and their solutions, I feel to be vitally mine … I have no ego sense nor conception of separateness."

"Father, there is little to tell." She spread her graceful hands in a deprecatory gesture. "My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came on this earth, Father, 'I was the same.' As a little girl, 'I was the same.' I grew into womanhood, but still 'I was the same.' When the family in which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, 'I was the same... And, Father, in front of you now, 'I am the same.' Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change[s] around me in the hall of eternity, 'I shall be the same.'"

"Melita Maschmann, a journalist, who has lived in India since 1963 and written several books, two of them about Anandamayi Ma,... explained to me what enlightenment meant: ‘Ma sees in everything and everywhere only the one god, i.e. her own self. For her, ‘others’ don’t exist. She herself has said that only because of convention she differentiates between herself and others. In truth, she doesn’t see a difference and there is no difference.’"

"It may be true that I had dancing in my blood... I was a toddler when I danced deliriously with that street beggar. All called him a madman when he brought the house down with his frenetic dancing. Was he really mad? His unerring jatis (danced to rhythmic patterns) reverberate in my mind. Who knows which siddhapurusha (literally: “with all accomplishments”) he was? I can still see the gleam in his eye. If I am dance-mad now how could it be otherwise?... My first guru was a madman."

"The initial inspiration for me to take up dancing came from seeing performances of Gauri Ammal when I was very young. If this lady had not brought the dance to such a stage of development, the combination of music and dance that I have attempted to realize would not have been possible."

"Bharatanatyam is grounded in bhakthi. In fact bhakthi is at the center of all arts of India. Our music and dance are two offerings to God...This experience may only occur once in a while but when it does for that little duration, its grandeur enters the soul not transiently but with a sense of eternity. As one gets involved in the art, with greater and greater dedication, one can continuously experience throughout the few hours of the dance, the unending joy, this complete well-being, especially when music and dance mingle indistinguishably."

"It was my mother, Jayammal, who had me trained as a dancer despite strong family opposition."

"Although she was blind by that time, she was the best critique of my dance. If there is any one I would like to known, I would like to be remembered as Danam’s granddaughter."

"Dignified restraint is the hallmark of abhinaya....The divine is divine only because of its suggestive, subtle quality."

"When asked why she thought there was deterioration in standards and expectations of art, she suggested it was the result of the fuss generated around young dancers, the pressures to perform at an early debut, and the indiscriminate acclaim given to young dancers before they had found their feet."

"There used to be beggar, a sort of maniac, who would jump up and dance like a monkey while singing tat tarigappa tei ta, tat tarigappa tei ta. Bala would imitate him, both dancing like monkeys... All of us tried to snub him but the beggar could not be turned out. It meant a few coins for him; he made a regular visit to our house and the two used to dance. That was the real starting point for Bala’s dancing mania."

"Observation of a relative in"

"She was the only one where the music and dance were equally important... her dance moves were deeply affected by this... she was able to convey not only the meaning of the dance, but also the emotion of the music. That’s what I liked best."

"Perhaps the greatest Indian dancer of the past thousand years."

"A country's greatness lies in its undying ideals of love and sacrifice that inspire the mothers of shubh"

"We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action."

"As a theory of [satyagraha] which must of necessity grow and expand because it carries within itself the immortal function of life. The fire of satyagrha had been kindled in the temple or ashrama where Mahatma Gandhi is the high priest or guru."

"Good Heavens! She said ‘grass and goats milk? Never!’"

"Sense of justice is one of the most wonderful ideals of Islam, because as I read in the Quran I find those dynamic principles of life, not mystic but practical ethics for the daily conduct of life suited to the whole world."

"It (Islam) was the first religion that preached and practiced democracy; for, in the mosque, when the call for prayer is sounded and worshippers are gathered together, the democracy of Islam is embodied five times a day when the peasant and king kneel side by side and proclaim: ‘God Alone is Great’… I have been struck over and over again by this indivisible unity of Islam that makes man instinctively a brother."

"I am not ready to die because it requires infinitely higher courage to live."

"Caprice You held a wild flower in your finger -tips, Idly you pressed it to indifferent lips, Idly you tore its crimson leaves apart... Alas! It was my heart You held wine-cup in your finger-tips, Lightly you raised it to indifferent lips, Lightly you drank and flung away the bowl…, Alas! It was my soul. Page 153"

"Awake Hindus: Mother! The flowers of our worship have crowned thee! Parsees: Mother! The flame of our hope shall surround you Mussulmans: Mother! The sword of our love shall defend thee Christians: Mother! The song of thy faith shall attend thee All creeds: Shall not our dauntless devotion avail thee? Harken! O Queen O!goddess, we hail thee!"

"Stand here with me with the stars and hills for witness and in their presence consecrate your life and your talent, your song and your speech, your thought and your dream to the Motherland. O Poet, see visions from the hill tops and spreads abroad the message of hope to the toilers in the valley."

"Having traveled, having conceived, having hoped, having enlarged my love, having widened my sympathies, having come into contact with different races, different communities, different religions, different civilizations, friends, my vision is clear. I have no prejudice of race, creed, caste, or colour.... Until you students have acquired and mastered the spirit of brotherhood, do not believe it possible that you will ever cease to be sectarian... if I may use such word.... you will ever be national."

"I say it is not your pride that you are a Madrasi, it is not your pride that you a Brahmin, it is not your pride that you belong to South India, it is not your pride that you are a Hindu, that it is your pride that you are an Indian". "But this must transcend even national borders and extend to humanity because if ideas be only for the prosperity of your country, it would end where it began, by being a prophet to your own community and very probably to your own self."

"Her work has a real beauty Some of her lyrical work is likely, I think, to survive among the lasting things in English literature and by these, even if they are fine rather than great, she may take her rank among the immortals."

"Sarojini Naidu writes instant poetry where images and metaphors come rolling ready on the hot plates of imagination. Her poetry is intensely emotionally, at times passionate to the point of eroticism and always has a spring."

"Stand here with me...with the stars and hills as witness and in their presence consecrate your life and talent, your song and your speech, your thought and your dream, to the motherland. O poet see visions from hill –tops and spread abroad the message of hope to the toilers of the valleys."

"Is not just a faded echo of the feeble voice of decadent romanticism but an authentic Indian English utterance exquisitely tuned to the composite to Indian ethos, bringing home to the unbiased reader all the opulence, pageantry and charm of Indian life, and the spenders of Indian scene."

"I am no believer in foreign propaganda as it is commonly understood, i.e., in the sense of establishing an agency or even sending peripatetic deputations. But the foreign propaganda that Sarojini Devi would carry on during her tour in the West would be the propaganda that would tell more than anything that could be done by an established agency whose very existence would be unknown to the indifferent and would be ignored by those whose opinion would matter to us. Not so India's Nightingale. She is known to the West. She would compel a hearing wherever she goes. She adds to her great eloquence and greater poetry a delicate sense of the true diplomacy that knows what to say and when to say it and that knows how to say the truth without hurting. We have every reason to expect much from her mission to the West. With the instinct of a gentlewoman she has gone with the resolution not to enter upon a direct refutation of Miss Mayo's insolent libel. Her presence and her exposition of what India is and means to her would be a complete answer to all the untruth that has been dinned into the ready ears of the American public by agencies whose aim is to belittle India and all that is Indian."

"She intimately knows more Mussalmans than I do. She has access to their hearts, which I cannot pretend to. Add to these qualifications her sex, which is her strongest qualification in which no man can approach her. For peace-making is woman's special prerogative. Sarojini Devi has deliberately cultivated that special quality of her sex. She showed it to perfection at the time of the disgraceful rioting in Bombay in 1921. Her personal bravery and her tireless energy had become infectious. Wherever she went, the rioters laid down their arms. She has been a veritable angel of peace in East Africa and South Africa. The best welcome India can extend to her is to pray that God may give her the strength to continue her mission of peace and that she may become an indissoluble cement between the two communities. May the so-called weaker sex succeed where we, the so-called stronger sex, have failed."

"God presses not pride but humility in His service. Man knows how to destroy, it is woman`s prerogative to construct. May Sarojini be the instrument in God`s hands for constructing real unity between Hindus and Mussalmans."

"That woman is living solely for the cause of India. She is using all her extraordinary power of speech and pen in India's service. There is, of course, in her behaviour with men, a freedom which may appear to the strictly orthodox - Malaviyaji for instance - as going beyond the limits of modesty. She revels in fun and frolic - even mischievous pranks. But to me it seems she is just the sort of person whom all that befits. I know her husband well enough. He, too, is a brave soul. He has the largeness of heart to give her the fullest freedom. They simply hug and dote upon each other. I think she never hides from the public gaze her conduct with anybody. The fact itself is a proof of the purity of her soul."

"But it is woven into her nature - to laud to the skies the person she admires. But apart from these defects, where would you find a woman like her who has given up her life and soul for India?"

"The wandering singer has returned home after many conquests in the West....May she cast over us the same spell that she has cast over the Americans."

"She began life as a poet, in later years when the compulsion of events drew into the national struggle, she plunged into it with all the zest and fire she possessed.... whose whole life became a poem and a song and who infused artistry and grace in the national struggle, just as Mahatma Gandhi had infused moral grandeur to it."

"Jester in Mahatma’s court"

"She could be calm in the face of danger because her courage was the outcome of love, not of pride, ‘love ’said Mahatma Gandhi, is hard like a stone and soft like a blossom."

"As a CEO, I am finding that I have to become a learning CEO. I have to go to school all the time because I am learning new skills that I need to run this company and I am realising that I am not equipped to just coast, I have to constantly renew my skills."

"Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader. As a leader I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future."

"Do you remember campaigns like Keep America Beautiful? What about ‘buckle up’? I believe we need an approach like this to attack obesity. Let us be good industry that does 100% of what is possibly can-not grudgingly, but willingly."

"[moot issue is that ] we should talk about is not just lessons in leadership or what the leaders need to do today but what can India do to bring those leaders back to India, so India itself can become an even more powerful economy going forward."

"I am a mother first, then a CEO and then a wife."

"You cannot deliver value unless you anchor the company's values. Values make an unsinkable ship." Code of conduct goes beyond legal compliance and every employee needs to be well versed with it."

"There were many times that I felt like a fish out of water, times that I really said to myself, 'do I even fit in'."

"At the end of the day, don’t forget that you are a person, don’t forget you are a mother, don’t forget you are a wife, don’t forget you are a daughter. Because in the end, no matter how much money you make and how much success you create, What you are left is family, friends and faith."

"Bring together what is good for business with what is good for the world."

"Each of us in the US - the long middle finger - must be careful that we extend our arm in either a business or political sense, we take pains to assure that we are giving a hand, not the finger. Unfortunately, I think this is how the reset of the world looks at the US right now. Not as part of the hand-giving strength and purpose to the rest of the fingers –but instead scratching our nose and sending a signal."

"I have an immigrant mentality, which is that the job can be taken away at any time, so make sure you earn it every day...immigrants come here they have no safety net-zero. I landed here with $500 in my pocket. I had no one here to pay for me."

"Turbulence is the beginning of a fruitful process of transformation."

"First, accept that turbulence is here to stay. Most successful companies are those that stay calm and think down to earth rather than showing aggressiveness to shorten the crisis period."

"Don’t take an eye on the short term but think long."

"One should not shy away from creating an environment of adaptability."

"You cannot deliver value unless you anchor the company’s values. Values make an unsinkable ship."

"Aristotle once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think it's time to examine what we do once more in the spirit of a critical friend. Let's pause for a moment to consider what we need to examine."

"I think there are at least five ways in which job description will change."

"The CEO has to think long-term and needs to understand the way public and private sectors are coming together and work constructively within that framework. CEOs need to make the phrase "think global and act local" more than a cliche?"

"CEOs need keep an open mind so they can adapt to a rapidly changing world and need to bring an abundant dose of emotional intelligence to the job."

"The whole perspectives in which companies are viewed needs to shift from short to the long-term, and as I would say, to a focus on shapes, not just numbers."

"I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said, 'I'll arrange a marriage for you at 18,' but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to and encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president."

"To lead in an ever-changing world, leaders must adapt and stay nimble."

"I'm very honest - brutally honest. I always look at things from their point of view as well as mine. And I know when to walk away."

"Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that."

"I think innovation as a discipline needs to go back and get rethought and revived. There are so many models to talk about innovation, there are so many typologies of innovation, and you have to find a good innovation metric that truly captures the innovation performance of a company."

"My father was an absolutely wonderful human being. From him I learned to always assume positive intent. Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent."

"When I grew up there was no web, blogging or tweeting. In fact, where I grew up there was not even television! I met a lot of my friends in school and in college, and they are still my friends today."

"When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response."

"As a leader, I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however, I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future."

"I pick up the details that drive the organization insane. But sweating the details is more important than anything else."

"Anything that's done to address unemployment in terms of massive stimulus spending is going to exacerbate deficits. And anything that's done to address deficits in the short-term is going to exacerbate unemployment."

"The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson. I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don't improve myself and lift the organization, because that distance is a constant."

"The one thing I have learned as a CEO is that leadership at various levels is vastly different. When I was leading a function or a business, there were certain demands and requirements to be a leader. As you move up the organization, the requirements for leading that organization don't grow vertically; they grow exponentially."

"We are in a bit of a policy box and it's going to require us being willing to give up one of the two, which is it's okay to take on more deficits but lets put in some massive spending. Alternatively to say, 'we're going to go through structural unemployment for a while because we want to address deficits."

"Our hope is that whosoever is in power, manages this country consistently for all the potential the country has."

"I have no comments on political situations. I speak as the CEO of a large multinational company. Countries like India should be successful for the long term because India needs growth."

"India needs to grow at 7 to 8 per cent to ensure full employment and we all will do our part to invest in India to make sure India achieves its growth potential."

"We are not guided by elections. We are guided by potential of India. We are not waiting for any election results to invest in India. We are investing in India for its economic story."

"Look, when you pull into the garage, leave the crown there. Don't walk in with it, because you are first a wife and a mother. And if the family needs milk, you go get the milk. That is your primary role in life. Everything else is what you acquired or what you got because I pray for four to five hours a day.' That is the only thing she tells me."

"Her mother’s advice quoted in"

"One such way was to do with her lifelong love of cricket. No one in this country (the US) followed the game, but they did follow baseball, another bat-and-ball sport. So she threw herself into baseball and into the local team, the New York Yankees, reading everything she could on the subject until she could comfortably talk about it."

"Nui is a different kind of CEO. He says her approach boils down to balancing the profit motive by making healthier snacks (in speech to the food industry, she pushed the group to tackle obesity), striving for a net zero impact on the environment and taking care of your workforce. She was one of the first executives to realize that the health and green movements were just not fads and she demanded true innovation."

"Indra can drive as deep and hard as anyone I have ever met, but she can do it with a sense of heart and fun."

"As someone who has always aspired to build a company committed to its people and to the world, I admire her determination to achieve sustainability at an established company like Pepsi Co. And I believe that all socially responsible companies could learn from Indra Nooyi’s style of leadership."

"I don’t think women can have it all. I just don’t think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all. My husband and I have been married for 34 years and we have two daughters. Every day you have to make a decision of whether you’re going to be a wife or a mother—in fact many times a day during the day you have to make those decisions. And you have to co-opt a lot of people to help you. We co-opted our families to help us. We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I’m not sure they will say that I’ve been a good mom"

"When you have to have kids you have to build your career. Just when you’re rising to middle management, your kids need you because they’re teenagers—they need you for the teenage years. And that’s the time your husband becomes a teenager too, so he needs you… Your parents need you because they’re aging. So we’re screwed, we have no hope, we cannot have it all. So you know what? Coping mechanisms. Train people at work. Train your family"

"Have you done your homework"

"It’s seamless parenting"

"But if you don’t do that, if you don’t develop mechanisms with your secretary, with the extended office, with everyone around you, it cannot work"

"There are consequences to the juggling"

"Being a CEO of a company is three full-time jobs rolled into one. How can you do justice to all? You can’t. The person that hurts the most with this whole thing is your spouse"

"cannot have it all, and that the biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict with one another. Total and complete conflict"

"The higher you go, it’s either up or out. People are waiting to knock you off the ladder"

"Peak performance requires peak conditioning —we don’t tell professional athletes to work out four hours a week, why in the world would anyone think we could achieve great success in business with a four hour workweek? Be like Lionel Messi, do the work"

"Accept, and seek out, people telling truths to power"

"Being surrounded by people who challenge you isn’t easy, but it forces better decision-making. Being surrounded by yes men and women does not always make progress, if often gets the wrong job done"

"Reaching the top doesn’t mean having unchecked power — it means having full accountability. Leaders need dissenting voices to push them toward better solutions. I ask for feedback so my team feels comfortable telling me no, or an idea I have is bad, and when you open that door they storm right through :) And it’s all good"

"So I go out and get milk. And when I come back, I’m hopping mad. I say, I had great news for you. I’ve just been named President of PepsiCo. And all you want me to do is go out and get milk"

"All I want to do is play."

"Clothing is my personal thing. Every time I get dressed, I fear that it will be the next three days' wear"

"Playing for the country is an honour. The ultimate honour, in fact. If you want to look at it as pressure, you will find it very difficult to cope with the expectations of a billion people. I look at it as an opportunity, as being among the few who have been given this opportunity to make the country proud."

"Injuries can end a sportsperson's career and I am glad I have been able to make a comeback and make it to the world's top 10 in doubles and have done reasonably well in mixed doubles. I always believed I had tennis left in me and I am grateful to god for this opportunity."

"I will do all I can to win a medal [2012 Olympics]. To see the National flag go up while standing on the podium is the proudest moment in an athlete's life and I will want to experience that for myself in London. Please just keep praying for the entire Indian contingent. We have a really good chance of doing well at these Games and it will provide a huge fillip to Indian Olympic sport if we are all able to perform to potential."

"I think people tend to forget that as celebrities we are still human. We have the same emotions - we cry, we have fun, we laugh, we get sad, and we get hurt. When something is written about you, which millions of people are reading, and it is not true, imagine how hurtful it can be."

"I have a passion for playing tennis and enjoy the workload and struggles of performing in this amazing global sport."

"A defeat at any stage, whether in the first round or in the final of a major tournament, is always disappointing. But as sportsmen, we learn to pick ourselves up to bounce back and move on for the next challenge."

"One of the thrills of playing at the top tennis centres of the world is to see the Indian flag go up whenever I`m participating in these events. That's enough motivation for any Indian who has the opportunity to perform at these tournaments."

"It's been 20 years since I started playing tennis and I've spent a decade playing singles and doubles professionally. I still enjoy singles and may play in an occasional tournament or at the Fed Cup if my country needs me. But I think the time has now come for me to completely shift my focus onto doubles."

"On the tennis court, one needs a cool temperament, tremendous ball sense, reflexes, speed, hand-eye co-ordination, power, timing and peak physical fitness. Off the court, the player and support team need skills in planning, execution, travel, an ability to raise funds when needed, and several other talents."

"The honour and respect that a country earns by being represented at mega-sporting events like the Grand Slams has to be seen to be believed, experienced to be fully understood."

"Well, I've grown up on the tennis circuit which has friendships with people from diverse religions, races, backgrounds and scores of different countries across the globe. I think this experience broadened my horizons. I can comfortably embrace relationships on a personal level while looking beyond narrow constraints."

"Negativity sells. I have been labelled a rebel. If I had been one, would I have got married at 23? Would I have been a straight student?"

"One win and you’re on top of the world. Lose in the first round of the next tournament; you’re back to reality."

"There's no doubt that my forehand and backhand can match anyone, it's about the place that they're put in. I can hit the ball as hard as anyone can, but I think it's more about where I'm hitting the ball. Instead of 90 mph it can just be a 50 mph forehand, but the placement is more important. So I've been working on that a lot more. When you're working on things, maybe your performance drops a little bit or you're trying new things in every tournament you're going in so that's just a process of being an athlete because you're learning, you're adding new things to your game. When I sit with my notes, for instance, instead of hitting a hard forehand return, I would like to hit an angled forehand return instead."

"My serve used to be a weakness and I don't think it's a weakness anymore. I'm trying to come a lot more to the net and trying to be more offensive — not in terms of hitting the ball harder, which I think is quite hard for me to hit it any harder than I do — but in terms of building the point and coming to the net and being offensive at the net. A lot of the top girls barely do (come to net) except like Mauresmo or Henin does it a little bit, but a lot of girls don't do it."

"Six-year-old girls in a place like Hyderabad did not play; tennis was a recreation like badminton or gardening. So I draw inspiration from my parents. Steffi Graf has always been my tennis idol; always Steffi Graf. Just the way she was and the way she carried herself on the court and off the court. She does inspire me today. Everyone asks me "Who is your favorite tennis player?" And I always say "Steffi Graf." I just cannot imagine anyone being better than her, you know? I think a lot of people love Steffi Graf for the way she was on and off the court."

"Well, I'm not a yoga person. I've been told to try yoga. I just can't get myself to do yoga. I pray four or five times a day so it's about 10 minutes of total concentration... Also because when you're trying to focus only on God, you're trying to get everything else out of your head and just have that single focus. Trust me, it's very hard to do that four or five times a day. I mean, it's hard enough to do it once a day, but four or five times a day to just switch off the world and focus everything on God is difficult to do, and I do try to do that. I think that's one of the reasons yoga is not part of my routine and I feel this is better because I am actually being constructive, but in yoga I'm just going blank."

"Of all the sports I've seen, I think tennis is the most competitive sport in the world. Because we are playing week after week, 36 weeks a year competing against the same players over and over again."

"Fitness is defined differently by everyone, but for me, the most important thing is being healthy. As tennis players, what we do is not the healthiest thing. We almost abuse our bodies."

"I'm not a part of the glamour industry. I would like to focus on my game, and there are minimal chances of me getting into films."

"We players are as normal human beings as anyone else, and we also have the right to live a normal life. I don't understand why people talk so much about the way we dress up, how we walk, what we eat, and every little detail of ours. Players are the real heroes. Sports have both respect and fame, and I am fortunate enough to be a sportsperson."

"Whether it is tennis or any other sport, the situation for women now is far better than it was 10 years ago when I had started playing. Now, people support and promote their daughters to play and take up sports as their career. It wasn't the case during my time. I am glad that things are looking better for girls. Taking a step in this direction, I too have opened my training academy in Hyderabad. Sport for girls in India is in great shape now."

"In life there's stuff you can control and stuff you can't. There's nothing you can do about it. No point getting angry and upset because it's beyond your control. As a professional athlete, you learn to roll with the punches."

"I'm partial to stilettos. Stilettos and long, flowing dresses are my new favourites. I like my dresses in lively shades these days, a teal or bright mix of orange and red."

"When I got married I thought I would have kids early, but the more I'm playing, the more I'm enjoying it. I really enjoy competing."

"Too much going on, never in my life thought that I'd had to worry about anything of this sort, rather than my mehendi!"

"Leaves me with no choice but to laugh. I am pretty sure these are not the pre-wedding jitters or butterflies in the stomach my married cousins were talking about!"

"I think being a woman celebrity is the hardest thing in India.... People will ask many things, what you wear, how you speak, when you will have a baby and other things."

"When a woman wants to do something on her own way, she is criticized, dubbed as a rebel. I (too) was stated an arrogant. However, I stuck to my guns and today I am at this place. We have to fight in order to move forward in this men's world."

"As I came to the lime light, the media asked me many questions. A lot many moral policing... 'Wear this, wear that, why a T-shirt?' Everybody has the right to form their opinions, and I have the right to ignore them."

"The facilities at that point in India were not up to international standards and the lack of tennis culture did make things more difficult."

"I don't think I have made any deliberate or conscious attempt to represent the new generation. I am what I am."

"The most difficult element is perhaps the lack of privacy in my life."

"Yes, I'm a practising Muslim, but I don't understand why only I'm asked about my religion. Everyone's got a religion out there. I wonder why no one else is asked about it."

"The media is only concerned with trying to sell themselves through concocted sensationalism. I try to avoid them and rarely read their concocted stories."

"You can either agree with me, or be wrong."

"Indian doubles tennis ace Sania Mirza recently achieved a career-best rank of number five in the world when the new Women’s Tennis Association doubles chart was released after the Wimbledon Championships concluded in July 2014."

"She is the pride of Hyderabad and hoped she would soon become No 1 player from her fifth position. The government would extend all support to provide her best training and other facilities."

"She was conferred with the prestigious Padma Shri award for her contribution to tennis on the eve [25 January 2006] of the Republic Day."

"She and Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik tied the nuptial knot on Monday (April 12) as the two families advanced the high-profile marriage by three days after a tumultuous build up to the wedding. The build up to their marriage was controversial due to Shoaib's first marriage with local girl Ayesha."

"She is the highest ranked female tennis player ever from India, with a career high ranking of 27 in singles and 7 in doubles. She knows from her early experiences about the hardships that tennis players from India have to endure in order to become a successful professional. She had a long cherished vision for Tennis in India. The Vision - "To pave a way for Indian Tennis by training and promoting urban and rural talent and to enable our players to make a significant mark in the world of international tennis.""

"A couple of weeks ago, the 21-year-old was photographed with her feet up while watching a colleague playing in an international exhibition match in Perth, and the proximity of her toes to a nearby Indian flag raised temperatures in her home state to vindaloo levels."

"A High Court lawyer filed a case for her arrest (without bail) and a three-year jail sentence... [case] under something called the "Prevention Of Insult To The National Honour Act", citing "disrespect" to the national flag. India's predilection for red tape, taught to them by the Imperial British, but since refined to gargantuan levels, means that by the time the case gets to court she will probably be a grandmother, but it's a bit of worry nonetheless. When Sania, who is Shia Muslim, first bared her thighs on a tennis court, people took to the streets to burn effigies of her, although this in itself is such a common event in India that it more or less doubles the smog levels."

"When she first started out on the pro circuit at the age of 18, the length of her skirts prompted some religious mullah to issue a fatwa, which was a bit of a handicap to her chosen profession given that fashion in women's tennis apparel has moved on, not to mention up, since Suzanne Lenglen's knickers were covered by several petticoats and a skirt which picked up chalk from the baseline."

"The fastest rising star in women's tennis is adored by millions in her home country. But the Muslim teenager has been denounced by extremist clerics for dressing in a 'corrupting' way. Now she needs bodyguards to provide constant protection."

"On 12 February 2005 thousands of people started gathering at dawn for the final of the Hyderabad Open [to watch Sania in the final] and, by 10 in the morning, so dense were the crowds outside that it was difficult to get into the Fateh Maidan complex. There for the match were film stars from south India as well as local government officials; corporate VIPs from Mumbai, labourers from nearby towns and families who had travelled hundreds of miles from Delhi."

"She had become headline news in her homeland since her return from Melbourne, where in January [2005] she had reached the third round of the Australian Open, the first time that an Indian woman had progressed so far in a grand slam event."

"Her breezy optimism as she took on some of the world's top players endeared her to her compatriots: for just as India was beginning to emerge as a world power, here was a young woman displaying a brazen determination to shake off the shackles of the underdog. Off-court, too, her confidence was striking. Confounding stereotypes of demure and retiring Indian femininity, she delighted in brash displays of adolescent attitude."

"She is a very talented player. I see a very good future for her."

"With her diamond nose stud and multiple ear-piercings, she brought glamour to the game. Advertisers and corporate sponsors rushed to sign her and soon her face was selling."

"Indian Gold, Indian tea and Indian petrol to the nation: When car manufacturer Hyundai made her brand ambassador for their Getz model, production capacity doubled. She had not yet won a major tournament, but her fame was spreading well beyond Asia: soon she would be on the front of Time magazine and selected by the New Statesman as one of 10 young people with the potential to change the world."

"The dress she wears on the tennis court not only doesn't cover large parts of her body but leaves nothing to the imagination of voyeurs. She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence."

"When she first emerged, she was celebrated as an example of how well religious integration was working in a country that has a Muslim president, a Sikh prime minister, and a Christian leader of its Congress party. The controversy over her clothes was seen as an absurdity by mainstream Muslim leaders."

"We are proud of her achievement. In India there are not many other young female role models like her."

"She proves that young Muslim girls can make a mark if they are given the right chances... Many Muslims in India are economically and educationally backward; she has given the community new hope."

"India is the country that produced such cultured male players as Vijay Amritraj and Ramesh Krishnan, and she might have been expected to place as much emphasis on old-style craft as crunch. In fact, her all-out aggression, underpinned by the sort of destructive forehand that was the signature of her role model Steffi Graf's game, makes her a very contemporary player indeed. To become a top-10 player, she has to work on her mobility and add some dimension to a game that is too dependent on the weighty forehand."

"She is fearless about going for the shots. She just believes that all her shots will go in."

"She is very typical of her generation - these new teenagers who are not quite the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll generation of Sixties America but who are very in your face, very confident and very brash. This kind of attitude is not unique to her: you see teenagers like her in the streets. She represents a new India that doesn't care what anyone thinks."

"She is betraying both nations, she neither lives here (India) nor in Pakistan, but she resides in Dubai. We request the Indian Government not to allow Sania to represent India and let her reside in Dubai."

"The fact that our government shouts "death sentence" and the National Commission for Women ex-chairperson follows it up by calling for castration of rapists just shows a warped belief in a weird linkage between increasingly barbaric and sensational punishments and greater liberation for womankind. If only they'd look at mundane nitty-gritties."

"All these new demands, death penalty for rape and long terms in prison for harassing women will only have the offenders roaming free because the burden of proving "beyond reasonable doubt" will become the victim's problem."

"Sitting in a metropolis like Delhi, it’s easy to pass a judgement that laws are being misused. But we should look at the larger reality where the laws are yet to reach the minimum standards of use."

"Section 497 is based on Old Testament values. It doesn't protect the rights of women, only protects the proprietorial rights of men over their wives' bodies."

"It's a routine thing women go through with cops. They treat women, particularly from the lower classes or those they think of as "loose", in a very humiliating, lecherous manner."

"Dancing and singing are legitimate professions, not new to women. Banning such bars, would violate the right of these women to earn a livelihood, as laid down under Article 21 of the Constitution, as well as the right to carry on a legitimate profession under Article 19."

"He does not seem to have understood the gravity of the offence. India's elite lauded the amendments to the IPC, widening the definition of rape, little realizing that they did not apply simply to lower-class men, but could affect them too. While there has been much clamour for the death penalty in cases of rape involving the lower classes, would the elite now like to apply this to themselves?"

"Not only is the sentence meted out to the young boys from impoverished background too harsh, but our fear is that it will set a bad precedent and serve to dilute the "rarest of rare" premise upon which a verdict of death penalty must hinge as per our criminal jurisprudence. While most countries are moving towards abolition of death penalty, this is a move in the reverse direction."

"How are all the details relevant to the case and the actual crime? When it is a case of an upper class woman, there is a titillating curiosity and over interest in her life. Her life becomes a free for all."

"The ‘love jihad’ campaign diligently perpetuates the myth of the insatiably lustful Muslim man. Hindu women, in contrast, are made out to be helpless damsels, prone to seduction. This venomous propaganda has been wreaking havoc in the lives of young couples, with women denied their agency to choose their marriage partners. Within this communally vitiated atmosphere, where every interfaith marriage is viewed as a political conspiracy and every effort is made to keep Hindu girls ‘pure’ from contamination from Muslim boys, can the political party fuelling such an atmosphere spearhead a campaign to enforce the UCC?"

"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."

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

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

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

"“the word Hindutva is being used as a term of abuse […] it is used mostly in pejorative terms […] the debate appears no longer confined to the cloistered world of priests, or even the self-serving one of politics, it has expanded into a challenge to Hindu civilisation […] the wider attack on Indian civilisation that this pejorative use of the word Hindu represents. 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 […] racism [is] equated with Hindu Nationalism. For countries that gave us slavery and apartheid that really is rich, but who can blame them when we think so badly of ourselves. As for me I would like to state clearly that I believe that the Indic religions have made much less trouble for the world than the Semitic ones and that Hindu civilisation is something I am very proud of. If that is evidence of my being ‘communal’, then, so my inner voice tells me, so be it.”"

"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."

"This is why it has been so astonishingly easy for the Gandhi dynasty to turn India’s oldest political party into a family firm. And once dynastic succession became acceptable at the highest levels of political power, it became impossible to prevent dynastic democracy spreading like a slow poison into the very soul of India. It spread horizontally at higher levels of leadership in every political party and vertically down to the lowest levels of grassroots democracy. It has now become almost impossible to find a village council that is free of this debilitating disease. ... India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ could more appropriately have been called India’s tryst with dynasty."

"There was disappointment in Nehru’s leadership, but it never took away from the deep regard in which he was held for decades after he died. He was credited with bequeathing to India democracy and pluralism, and if anyone challenged the achievements of Nehruvian socialism, as V.S. Naipaul did in An Area of Darkness, he was reviled."

"It was the first time an Indian prime minister had been so open about his religion and a tremor of fear went up the ‘secular’ spine of Lutyens’ Delhi. Friends who had never see the Ganga puja or Benares said that they loved the ceremony but they were worried about the message this would send to Muslims and Christians. So they readied their ammunition for the attack on Modi’s secular credentials that began within months of his becoming prime minister."

"The reason I quote this sycophantic comment is because it reflects perfectly the consensus in smoke-filled newspaper offices and in Delhi’s television studios. And Sonia, reserved to the point of being uneasy with conversation of any kind, used this to her advantage when it came to handling the media. She evolved a policy whereby she refused to talk to journalists except those who were carefully vetted as supportive and obedient. The kind that may have asked her questions about India’s stand on important international issues or big political and economic problems were never allowed near her. The media was most helpful in this exercise. In newsrooms and TV studios I seemed always to run into some editor or columnist who had just come from 10 Janpath. You could tell that they had almost before they said anything in her support. No sooner did they get that invitation to tea in 10 Janpath than hard-boiled reporters would acquire so changed an expression on their faces that jokes began to be made about how ‘one cup of tea with Sonia Gandhi could change the DNA of a journalist’."

"The English-language media is a powerful pillar in the structure that makes up that most privileged enclave called Lutyens’ Delhi. Like the bureaucrats who constitute a much more powerful pillar, most journalists had traditionally been from English-speaking, upper class India. They saw the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty as representing their class interests as much as it represented the colonized officials who inherited India from the British. The very idea of Modi was terrifying because what language would they interview him in? Would he give them interviews at all or choose Hindi journalists instead? Would the cosy relationship they had with power remain? Would their ‘idea of India’ remain intact?"

"If there is a single reason why Narendra Modi became the first prime minister in more than thirty years to get a full mandate from the people of India it was because he was the only one who understood how urgently people wanted change. The word he used most in his election speeches was the word for change in Hindi. And every time he said parivartan his audience would roar its approval. During the election campaign I came to understand that it was more important than anything else he could promise on a hot, stifling evening in Pappu’s chai shop in Benares."

"“When I go to the Vishwanath Mandir in Benares and listen to the most powerful, magical aarti I hear from the priests that the knowledge of it will probably die because the temple is now controlled by secular bureaucrats”."

"Now that the Chief Minister of Bihar has dragged 'succularism' into the political discourse, it is time to deconstruct it so that we can end this pointless debate once and for all. I have deliberately misspelt the word because when said in Hindi that is how it is usually pronounced. It is a hard word to write in devnagri and the Hindi and Urdu equivalents do not quite mean what secularism has come to mean in the Indian political context. It is a foreign word that evolved in a European context when the powers of the church and the state were separated. In India, since none of our religions were led by pontiffs who controlled armies, or had vast temporal powers, we had no need to make this separation. But, the word secularism is used in India more than almost any other country. Why? Well, because when we entered our current era of coalition governments, political parties of leftist disposition found it convenient to keep the BJP out of power by saying they would only ally with 'succular phorces'. The BJP became a pariah after the Babri Masjid came down and so whenever someone like Nitish Kumar wants to hurl abuse at the party he is in alliance with in Bihar, or one of its leaders, the 'secularism' debate gets revived."

"When I heard Aung San Suu Kyi's address to both houses of Britian's Parliament in Westminster hall last week, what impressed me was the clarity with which she spelt out her vision for her country. But, throughout her speech, something kept bothering me and by the time she finished, I discovered what it was. What bothered me was that I could not think of a single Indian leader who could make such a speech. The Indian political landscape today has become a desert in which only the stunted progeny of stunted political leaders bloom. We need our political parties to throw up real leaders and we need a political discourse in which real political problems are discussed. So can we stop fishing 'secularism' out of the dustbin of history and holding it up as a shining ideal? Its relevance faded a long time ago."

"Dynasty, a political tool in the hands of the ruling class, has become the catalyst for a new colonization of a country whose soul has already been deeply scarred by centuries of it."

"Last week I went to see Arun Jaitley. He is one of the few politicians whom I respect. I have known him from the time I was a junior reporter and can say honestly that he is one of a handful of politicians who is not in politics for personal gain but for public service. He is in the process of moving out of the house in Lutyens’ Delhi that was allotted to him as a senior minister. While waiting to see him I noticed blank spaces on the walls where pictures have been taken down. His decision to surrender his government house as soon as he demitted office is remarkable in itself. I know millionaires and maharajahs who have to be physically evicted."

"It took this election campaign for ordinary Indians to notice what was going on. They noticed because Modi told voters that they were choosing between a ‘kaamdaar’ and a ‘naamdaar’. A working man and a prince. It did not help that the ‘naamdaar’ then mocked Modi and made fun of everything about him. Modi’s ‘hugplomacy’, ‘Gabbar Singh Tax’, demonetisation. Modi’s demonetisation, he said, was done to steal their money and give it to his rich friends. The country’s Chowkidar, he said too many times, was a ‘chor’. He forgot that he was demeaning not just a political opponent but the Prime Minister of India. Ordinary voters were appalled that the heir to India’s most powerful political dynasty should talk this way. He sounded arrogant, entitled and insulting and reminded them that there were too many political heirs in Indian politics"

"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 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. 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, , 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. 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."

"The 2014 general election marked the beginning of the end of India’s ruling elite. The election whose results came last week marked the end. As someone born and bred in this group of privileged Indians, I speak as an insider. So believe me when I tell you that we controlled everything. Politics, government, business, foreign policy, the police, the military and the media. All this was possible because we were to some degree all courtiers in the court of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty since the British left. We knew that their ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ were as fake as their ‘idea of India’.... If they have spent the past five years targeting Modi, often wrongly, for what they perceive as attempts to crush democracy, it is possibly because they know how easily this can be done. The truth is that the traditional ruling elite believes in an idea of India in which there are privileges and not rights. This was always a bad idea. Now it is dead."

"In 1989, Rajiv Gandhi lost the election because he was seen as corrupt by ordinary, rural Indians who made up ditties about the ‘son-in-law of Italy’. The Congress party has never explained why the best friends of Rajiv and his wife, Mr and Mrs Quattrocchi, were bribed in this deal. Nor has there been a credible explanation for why Rajiv did not make public the names of those bribed in this deal, even after Bofors officials came to Delhi and offered to give them.... whoever advised the Congress president (Rahul Gandhi) to continue charging Modi with corruption should have reminded him that the ghost of Bofors still lurks in the shadows of 10 Janpath."

"If this was indeed the plan it unraveled early that morning when a Belgian Indologist and Hindutva sympathizer called Koenraad Elst had to be sent home in disgrace because of his remark on Islam. It was not what he said about Islam that was wrong so much as the offensive manner in which he said it... A Muslim diplomat stood up halfway through Elst's speech and walked out. Ram Madhav, who was seated in the front row, intervened and the session was abruptly ended.... The next thing we knew was that Elst had been put back on a flight back to Belgium. The conference was intended to create a new idea of India but definitely not one in which there would be no room for Muslims."

"Many things have changed in India since Narendra Modi first became prime minister. But one change that has gone almost unnoticed is that a process of real decolonisation has transpired. And because of this the old, colonised ruling class has been swept away. This is a very good thing. It should have happened long, long ago. As someone who belonged to that ruling class, I consider myself well qualified to explain why this process of decolonisation was overdue and how we failed India as its ruling class."

"Questioning global stereotypes on economic responses to globalisation, I argue that labour becomes actively involved in the very process of globalisation and the expansion of capital. [...] Although it would seem a simple proposition to suggest that working class people and their organisations affect the ways in which the landscapes of capitalism are made, until recently, there has been little work, even within economic geography, addressing this issue."

"Low labour cost, along with flexibility in labour use, has become a key source of competitive advantage for firms. As external competition intensifies, the domestic industry has come under great pressure to restructure itself, to become more competitive and to adopt flexible policies with regard to production and labour. With a view to increasing global competitiveness, investors are moving more towards countries that either have low labour costs, or are shifting to informal employment arrangements. These changes create an entirely different political-economic environment for workers around the world. Greater international mobility of capital relative to labour puts workers from a given location at an immediate disadvantage, both in terms of bargaining power with the owners of capital (whose threat to move gains greater credibility) and with respect to the State. Thus the removal of domestic entry barriers and movement of capital to areas of cheap labour have caused intensification of domestic competition in many developing countries— especially those with surplus labour supply and those where labour is a major factor of production. This has been accentuated by potential investors citing the lack of flexibility in hiring and laying off workers as a concern, while targeting a developing country in which to invest."

"Optimism with regard to labour as an agency of has been replaced by pessimism that sees little prospect of workers acting on their own behalf."

"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 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."

"Clearly, the disparity between the prospects of win-alls and lose-alls maps perfectly with their respective general socio-economic conditions as determined by class, caste and . The current pandemic can significantly worsen the existing and expanding inequalities in Indian economy and society. Inequalities of health, income and employment even within the informal workforce can expand, with some informal workers at lower risk and others at higher on the three counts. This is as much a inequality issue as much as a public health dilemma. After the dust settles and restrictions are relaxed, the win-alls as well as others lying towards the more privileged end of the means spectrum should be able to hop straight back to their routines with their health, wealth and job security intact. The lose-alls and those proximate to that extreme will be more susceptible to illnesses, loss of income and job insecurity – and quite likely all three together. The latter group is trapped in an adverse equilibrium with the unjust choices of risking their health if they go to work, risking their income if they don’t go to work, and risking their employment if the COVID-19 continues."

"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. [...] The government’s advisories about restricting social contact are indeed important but such measures are economically risky for so many who face a choice between the devil and the deep-sea. Social distancing is impractical for the tens of millions without social security."

"Despite the annual embarrassment of India scoring a poor rank on the , nutrition and hunger hardly merit a mention in the budget speeches of our finance ministers. The last time there was anything related to tackling malnutrition among women and children was in 2014-15 – the first budget of the Narendra Modi government – where Arun Jaitley announced that a national nutrition mission would be launched. [...] Notwithstanding its positioning, budget 2020 in effect fails on many counts to respond to the nutrition challenge in India. The direct programmes which address the multidimensional nature of malnutrition including the ICDS, mid-day meals, PMMVY and Poshan Abhiyan are underfunded and at the same time PDS which contributes to basic food security is sought to be undermined. The government seems to be oblivious to the situation of hunger in the country. It further seeks to create an illusion of plenty by arguing in the Economic Survey in its chapter on 'Thalinomics' that food affordability has increased in the last few years. This chapter is based on a flawed methodology where it compares food prices as a proportion of incomes of workers in organised manufacturing who comprise less than 5% workers in India and does not take into account that wages for the majority have been stagnating and unemployment is at its peak."

"Imperfections need to be appreciated."

"Women need to equip themselves to address depression."

"A lady is conventionally trained to take up more responsibilities than a man. This enables her to take pleasure in every simplest thing she gets into. Women of Kerala are well trained to be happy in each stage of their life. But unfortunately, a very few of them are trained to face depression and hence they fail."

"Given the rigor and detailing that was needed to write the book—through the process the concepts I wrote about kept getting stronger."

"In my perspective, development is not limited to infrastructural development. Even sociological factors need to be considered. Women empowerment and ensuring gender justice is important."

"Let us put our democratic freedom to delight use!"

"I will get back on my feet even if I am knocked down’. For that, you need to know what all might knock you down and where would you fall."

"Fight your insecurities with all your might. Stay strong on the face of temptations that might lure you into bad company or undesirable vices that might throw you off the tangent. Whether you become a civil servant or not, you will have blossomed into a better human being at the end of it."

"In the end the court said we share your concerns, but the law is weak, we can't do anything."

"It is now an established fact that there is a complete lack of fear of law in the minds of criminals and instead the laxity of the system emboldens them to commit gruesome crimes against women and girls in the country."

"“I am not a box of chocolate waiting to please everyone, I would ultimately do what I feel right for me and then I went ahead to marry the man I love. The fire in me was ignited probably by all those armchair critics but what sailed me through was the desire to show what I was truly capable of. And now no one can take that away from me.”"

"If you have faith and keep moving on, things will eventually fall in place."

"It is a man’s world and to fight back we have to develop a very thick skin. Take criticism very constructively, but at the same time fight back and retain your position."

"In an interview she talked about her escape from death in the hands of Taliban. “The Taliban court gave its verdict. I was to be shot dead on the morning of July 22, 1995, on the charge of disorderly behaviour unbecoming of a woman… At 10.27 a.m., I was brought to the mehman-khana (guest room) where 15 Taliban soldiers, who were to be my executioners, were reading verses from the Koran.” said Sushmita."

"“Two men stood on top of me and beat me mercilessly while the others pulled at my hair,” she said. “Other women of the house just watched as mute spectators. “They were too scared. I don’t know what would have happened if a [local leader] had not intervened. He was fond of me for my work among the sick women. The Taliban, on that occasion, could not continue and fled.”"

"And, this is why we need to support @Wikipedia! Brahmins hate knowledge spreading! Concealing resources, denying education and punishing for learning is an age-old Hindu culture. Become a ’HERO’ of #FreeInformation by donating [to wikipedia]."

"However, the pandemic has exposed vast structural inequalities in our systems. The work-place is sharply divided between those who have formal contracts with a right to fair treatment, severance pay and protection from bullying and harassment, and those on zero-hour contracts, or no contracts at all with no rights. News stories highlight how structural weaknesses in the social security system could see many families descend into poverty and how migrants and immigrants can struggle to access benefits even while we continue to benefit from their labour. The disproportionate effect of the pandemic on BAME communities and the fact we have yet to see a plan to deal with that is yet another example."

"The death of George Floyd in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement has done for racial inequality what William Wilberforce once said about slavery, “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know.”"

"I am particularly pleased that the proportion of women amongst those appointed – 38% – matches the proportion of women in the relevant segment of the profession. … The proportion of applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds who have been appointed is also broadly equal to the proportion of advocates in the relevant segment of the profession,"

"While bulk of the marriages involved Muslim girls, others have also not eschewed the social evil. For instance, in 2008, while 4,249 of the 4,955 brides in the child marriages were Muslims, 339 were Scheduled Castes, 55 were Scheduled Tribe girls and 312 from other communities. Progressive Muslim thinker Prof M N Karassery told Deccan Herald that the figures were stunning. “Right from the beginning, a section of Muslim were against fixing an age limit for marriage of girls saying that the religion did not permit such a condition. However, the Muslim community in the State was believed to have been on the path of self-realisation that early marriage for girls would affect their employment, social life and future ,” he said."

"Kerala is the only state where child marriage rates have increased in recent years, particularly in its Muslim community."

"Mohammad Ali can’t even think about begging forgiveness from the British. If he does so then my old hands have enough strength to strangle him."

"The efforts of those who played before us, and all of us put together as a community, have now made this possible. Imagine those ex-women cricketers, who even without getting much 30 or 40 years ago, continued to play. They made our present reality possible"

"I don’t like the comparison between men’s cricket and women’s cricket"

"It’s just a different game. You don’t have to put us in the same category."

"Initially, when tennis was developing as a sport, there were comparisons made between the serve rates of different players. Now it has reached a point where Serena Williams is appreciated just as Roger Federer is in his own right. It’s time for cricket to also reach that place."

"So the one common thing I got from all the police officers was that they didn’t think I was acting at all, the authenticity and the reality with which I portrayed the part was really uncanny for them. They know people like that or they themselves are like that on duty."

"There were some female Police officers I met and they said that they were actually reminded of the way they need to conduct themselves at work, where they have to have a very tough exterior so that no one would take them lightly. Because being a girl that’s the first challenge you have in working in a man’s environment ; dealing with hardened criminals and all kinds of sketchy characters. So the tougher the exterior, better the job — and the easier the job becomes for these female police officers"

"All of them asked me where I did my research, whether I follow somebody around, was there some real-life inspiration that was behind my character study, mannerisms, the way I spoke, sat, etc. It was lovely to note"

"You know, I just wanted to invent something which came from within me with the help of the vision that Mikhil Musale the director and the co-writer of the script had so together we kind of built on, because I actually didn’t really do that"

"There will always be a gap between the goals set down and scheme of implementation. Women's groups by now have enough data to know where the policies have gone wrong. The whole question is gathering enough political clout to make a change."

"Our very limited interaction with NGOs active in this field in Tamil Nadu reveal that a large number of abortions take place outside the formal system since very often the state through its family planning outlets tries its own morality on women seeking abortions."

"The Battle of Kasahrada of 1178 CE that followed was unique when an outnumbered army with its troops of war elephants managed to crush the force that had just vanquished the mighty Sultanate of Ghazni and thereafter the Sultans of Multan. It seems the weather, too, supported the forces of Naiki Devi as unseasonal monsoons put the Ghori army under further disadvantage from the position that they were camped in. Merutunga elucidates this rather poetically when he says: ‘Queen Naiki, the daughter of Paramardin, fought at a ghat called Gadaraghatta and conquered the king of the Mlechchhas by the aid of a mass of rain clouds that came out of season attracted by her virtue.’"

"But in a time and age when it was uncommon for women to ascend the throne and vanquish foes by leading forces in battle, Rudrama Devi charted for herself an indelible place in the annals of the country."

"The queen who was the central protagonist of Awadh’s uprising against British rule hailed from extremely humble origins. Scattered details are all that are extant about her early life. She was born as Muhammadi Khanum to an African slave in Faizabad who was the bonded labourer of one Ghulam Ali Khan."

"Chennamma started learning the art of warfare after she became the queen of Keladi. In no time she became an expert in the use of weapons. Raja Somashekhara Nayaka gave her complete support. Soon she became well versed in politics and statecraft. She also started learning music and literature and mastered both the subjects. She established a colony and facilitated settlement of scholars from near and far off states to spread knowledge of ancient wisdom in her kingdom."

"The Shehzada of the Congress said recently that our Rajas and Maharajas back in the day were ruthless. They snatched or took away the humble assets of the poor at their whim. The Shehzada insulted the revered Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Rani Chennamma, whose good governance and patriotism still fill us with national pride and honour. Does he not have any knowledge of the contribution of the royal family of Mysuru who we all regard very highly and are proud of?"

"William Forbes-Mitchell, a Sergeant with the Ninety-Third Sutherland Highlanders in British India, wrote about Uda Devi in his book Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny , which was first published in 1893: “In the centre of the inner court of the Secundrabâgh there was a large peepul tree with a very bushy top, round the foot of which were set a number of jars full of cool water. When the slaughter was almost over, many of our men went under the tree for the sake of its shade, and to quench their burning thirst with a draught of the cool water from the jars. A number however lay dead under this tree, both of the Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third, and the many bodies lying in that particular spot attracted the notice of Captain Dawson. After having carefully examined the wounds, he noticed that in every case the men had evidently been shot from above. He thereupon stepped out from beneath the tree, and called to Quaker Wallace to look up if he could see any one in the top of the tree, because all the dead under it had apparently been shot from above. Wallace had his rifle loaded, and stepping back he carefully scanned the top of the tree. He almost immediately called out, ‘I see him, sir!’ and cocking his rifle he … fired, and down fell a body dressed in a tight-fitting red jacket and tight-fitting rose-coloured silk trousers; and the breast of the jacket bursting open with the fall, showed that the wearer was a woman, She was armed with a pair of heavy old-pattern cavalry pistols, one of which was in her belt still loaded, and her pouch was still about half full of ammunition, while from her perch in the tree, which had been carefully prepared before the attack….”"

"So much has changed in terms of the market; the audience has so many options, and you’re reaching for all kinds of attention when you’re making a film. I suppose when it’s really regressive sort of messaging, and it makes hundreds of crores, it hurts. Because you had the opportunity to push the needle in some direction and you didn’t. Those are the things that sometimes bother me. Having said that, every filmmaker has their goals."

"...In the writers’ world there is much fun and frolic, and spite and praise..."

"...Along with all this, today’s world, dominated by the ruthless grasping market and the questionable politics making inroads everywhere, has surrounded me in ways like never before. I have to confront it more directly and also protect my literary space from its pollution..."

"... So for me Partition has specific subcontinental implications, but it also spans the larger world..."

"...The follies of mankind from times immemorial have led to broken homes and illogical political identities, severed selves and truncated stories, dislocated populations and homeless refugees..."

"... I do not care for writing with a worked out plan of beginning, middle and end. Creativity can be an unexpected journey for the writer also..."

"...So many things go into the making of a creative work – a linguistic-literary tradition, an entire cultural lineage, history, one’s own experience and that of others distilled through observation, new readings and lessons learnt, hope and despair and playfulness and sadness, all feeding the writers’ imagination in tangible and not-so-tangible ways..."

"... Writing emotionally-charged scenes – independent of whether they resonate with my own life – may leave me with some sort of an enervating feeling and may also produce a compensatory aesthetic satisfaction, but they can also sap me, filling me with an incredible exhaustion..."

"...Self-critique is always there, as part of my intuition. It is this that produces, in the event of certain outcomes, that thrill of what you call ‘surprise’. It is also the pitiless slave-driver that keeps tormenting me, saying ‘no, not this, not this.’..."

"Is there anything else in this world other than love, that you will never get bored of recurrence?"

"Nothing is more wearing morally, than a weak husband."

"She was free-spirited and committed to women's equality - not someone who would easily consent to a marriage arranged by her family in India"

"Bonarjee was also a supporter of women's suffrage"

"Her triumph in the college Eisteddfod in 1914 prompted a burst of poetic creativity which has now been celebrated in the first ever collati0n of her verse."

"Obavva, the wife of a bugler who had just returned home from duty for his supper, had come out to fetch drinking water from a freshwater pond that flowed near this passage. To her horror, she noticed mysterious movements near the passage and realized that in single file the enemy’s soldiers were entering the fort. Not wanting to disturb her husband who was in the middle of his meal, she picked up a domestic pestle (onake in Kannada) that was there nearby and hid in the darkness around the secret entrance. As each soldier of the Mysorean army tried to wriggle his way out of the passage and enter the fort, she smashed his skull with her pestle and dragged his corpse away, waiting for her next victim to emerge. In this manner, Obavva slew several soldiers and a heap of bodies accumulated near the passage by the time her husband stepped out looking for his wife who had promised to return with some water to drink. He was horrified by the scene that he saw there; his wife had become the very incarnation of the goddess atop the fort who the Bedars propitiated with human sacrifice. He sounded the bugle alarm and the troops sallied out to defend the fort against the besiegers. Some of the besiegers took their revenge by stabbing Obavva from behind and her story was thus immortalized in local folklore and popular culture as ‘Onake Obavva’ or the lady with the pestle."

"A documented account of this popular and heroic folktale is found in the writings of S. Srikantaiya: The story of Vanike kandi connected with the second attack of Haider on Chitaldurg [Chitradurga] is interesting and is a remarkable testimony to the prowess of a lady, Obavva. Haider’s forces were unable to affect an entry into the fort and to storm it was next to impossible. Crevices in the walls where a woman was carrying curds to the fortress was discovered and the invading army attempted to march through in single file there. Nearby this passage was a fresh water pond half way up the hill. One day, when a bugler went to dine, Obavva, his wife, who went to get water from the pond, noticed the enemy marching in single file near this entrance. It was dark and hiding herself behind the entrance, she killed soldier after soldier with her vanake (pestle) as he marched through the entrance, till her husband returned. Needless to add, in spite of this heroism, thanks to the treachery of Mussalman employees of the Nayakas and the army of Jaramale, Haider was ultimately successful in 1779."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I call myself an accidental entrepreneur"

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

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

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

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

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

"We are confident that our capital efficiency and execution will make this our last fund raise before we become profitable with the eventual IPO in 2017"

"The only way to take the common man online was to make it resemble the local market,” Radhika told Tech In Asia. Four years on, we have about 350,000 small and medium sellers on the platform, and 14 million registered users"

"I love the story of Indra Nooyi being asked to get milk"

"Entrepreneurship anyway is not an easy way of life, whether you are a man or a woman"

"If you hear success stories, you are more likely to replicate that, she said – but that does not mean you could slack on hard work or preparation"

"When I hire people, I look for domain knowledge and passion. One of the things that helped us at ShopClues was that each one of us knew what our jobs were"

"There is no such thing as a perfect work-life balance. It’s about what you want to focus on and prioritising. When I’m at work, I’m a hundred per cent invested in it, and when I’m at home, I don’t think about work"

"My kids. Watching them grow gives me utmost happiness. Walking into office and seeing smiling employees motivates me to keep doing good work"

"Keep a keen eye on small victories as in the long run they lead to bigger gains"

"Giving up and not striving enough to achieve your goals under any circumstances"

"As long as you do something to improve today and make it a little better than yesterday, you’re going to be successful every day. Just show up and do something you’re passionate about"

"Being positive, as it leads to a healthy mind and body"

"There is no way to define and measure success or failure. Success for one is failure for another. Being successful or failing are subjective and not always black and white, at least in my opinion. I don’t see failure as an inability to succeed, but a different experience from the ideal. Every experience is a learning one, what is important is to try and not make the same mistake twice"

"Being an entrepreneur is itself a journey of challenges and there can never be a rule book to tackling them. Everyone faces some challenges in their lives and they have to handle it to the best of their abilities"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The day AFSPA is repealed I will eat rice from my mother's hand."

"I got nothing out of fasting for 16 years. I want to contest election and become chief minister because I need power for a big change in society and system."

"I am identified as an embodiment of saints. Since the beginning of my fast, there is no change in the mindset of the people. They remain content in making me a symbol of resistance. They wanted me to be a martyr."

"Let me not be sad because I am born a woman In this world; many saints suffer in this way."

"Can the river reject its fish? Can the mother spurn her child?"