Social Activists

"Leaders of secular parties... have so far made no serious effort to understand the true nature of Muslim politics in India."

"It is quite true that partition far from proving to be a solution to the Muslim problem has only aggravated it. But it is simply not true that there was a happy solution waiting round the corner only if partition had been avoided. For the Muslims demanded parity as the price for remaining in a politically united India and surely this was an impossible demand."

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

"“Only after one has obtained knowledge of the history,is he fully competent to deal with present problems, and then he is less certain than ever that any of the ordinary problems of life are particularly Negro problems.""

"the 'Negro problem'-that condition which is peculiar to Negroes, and common to them-is rather found in the attitude of the White race toward the Negro; an attitude of majority which seeks to shut out a minority from the enjoyment of the whole social and economic life."

"There will always be differences in people, but they won't be weighted down by myths"

"No woman in the world, certainly none in America, has had to battle for her virtue, for her self-respect, for her right to her own children, as has the black mother."

"Negro-Americans will have to fight, but not with bombs, and planes, and guns, but with intelligence, self-confidence, and determination, efficiency, and high moral principles."

"For 246 years [African slaves] received only board, lodging, and scant clothing. Calculated at one dollar a day, they earned five trillion dollars which have never been paid them."

"The legacy of Narayan Guru is a society elevated, in accord, the lower castes educated and full of dignity and a feeling of self-worth. The legacy of Ambedkar is a bunch screaming at everyone, a bunch always demanding and denouncing, a bunch mired in self-pity and hatred, a society at war with itself. The legacy of Narayan Guru is a country rejuvenated. The legacy of Ambedkar is a country with a deepened sense of shame in its entire past. And thereby further disabled."

"Arun Shourie tells us that a lot can be learned from the case of Narayan Guru who, early this century, as a member of the unapproachable Ezhava caste in Kerala, became an acknowledged religious leader and profoundly changed caste relations in Kerala for the better. He 'attained the highest spiritual states, thereby acquired unquestioned authority, and transformed society from within the tradition'. He made use of a major loophole in the rigidities of the caste system, a loophole which Hindu society deliberately maintained precisely because Hinduism was not merely a social system but, among other things, also a spiritual system: renunciates in general, and sages with acknowledged yogic realization in particular, are above the worldly divisions such as caste. They also have the authority to herald social transformations which Hindus would never accept from purely political busybodies."

"Earlier one of the greatest of reformers of the last hundred and fifty years had adopted the exact opposite course, and thereby accomplished both— he had lifted the lives of millions, and at the same time he had transformed and raised our society. That reformer was from a caste which was not just untouchable but unapproachable— the reformer of course was Narayan Guru, who lived from 1854 to 1928. He did not heckle and spit at our tradition as an outsider. He never made truck with the conquerors and subjugators of India. He attained the highest states of spiritual awareness by immersing himself in the teachings of the Upanishads. He attained those states by practising the austerities and following the methods which our great seers had uncovered. As he attained these states, his entire life became a refutation of the claims of the orthodox as to their superiority, his beatific state became a refutation of the assertions of the orthodox that the esoteric lore was closed to the lower castes. And as he had attained those states, he received universal homage."

"One caste, one religion, one God for man. Whatever be the religion, it is enough if the man is good."

"Mother is the first Guru to a child. Then comes father. Later, he who gives knowledge is the Guru. After that comes the Guru who teaches the secret of a good life and of true happiness. Last of all, when wisdom comes, one is a Guru unto oneself."

"One in kind, One in Faith and One in God Of one same womb, of one same form there is no Difference at all."

"Whatever be the difference in people’s caste, creed, language and religion, since they are from the same creation, there is no harm in their dining together and marrying each other."

"Total abolition [of vivisection] … will be achieved sometime, when the conduct of humanity toward all that breathes and suffers shall be governed by ideas of altruistic equity."

"Every system of law is a system of education, and, in extending legal sanction to the scientific torture of animals, the State educates the nation in a false view of the relations of man to the lower creatures, encourages selfishness and cruelty and the disregard of the rights of the weak by the strong."

"As our President said, we have in our army such minds as Spencer, and Mill, and I would add Buckle, and many others; and they are diffusing light, intelligence and civilization, and advocating the right. We have women also. We have Frances Cobbe; whose name I speak with pride and rejoicing; and in the literary world we have Charlotte Bronte, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others, who are consecrating their talents to the great cause of womanhood, and freedom, and right."

"By some strange and sinister fatality the chosen victims at present are the most intelligent and friendly of our domestic favourites—the cats who purr in love and confidence as they sit beside us on the hearth; the dogs whose faithful hearts glow with an affection for us, truer and fonder than we may easily find in any human breast."

"My great panacea for making Society at once better and more enjoyable would be to cultivate greater sincerity."

"I think that every woman who has any margin of time or money to spare should adopt some one public interest, some philanthropic undertaking, or some social agitation of reform, and give to that cause whatever time and work she may be able to afford; thus completing her life by adding to her private duties the noble effort to advance God's Kingdom beyond the bounds of her home."

"As the main work of civilisation has been the vindication of the rights of the weak, it is not too much, I think, to insist that the practice of Vivisection in which this tyranny of strength culminates is a retrograde step in the progress of our race—a backwater in the onward flowing stream of justice and mercy, no less portentous than deplorable."

"The making of a true Home is really our peculiar and inalienable right; a right which no man can take from us, for a man can no more make a Home than a drone can make a hive. He can build a castle or a palace, but, poor creature! be he wise as Solomon and rich as Croesus, he cannot turn into a Home. No masculine mortal can do that. It is a woman, and only a woman; a woman all by herself if she likes, and without any man to help her, who can turn a House into a Home."

"The time comes to every dog when it ceases to care for people merely for biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of doors. When a dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing, and perhaps is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the liberal cooks and active dog-boys in the world."

"I could discern clearly, even at that early age, the essential difference between people who are kind to dogs and people who really love them."

"We can benefit our kind in no way so much as by being ourselves pure and upright and noble-minded."

"I could not bear it did I not believe in another life for the poor harmless victims where their wrongs will be recompensed, & I may add also in another life for their inhuman persecutors where they will all repent in moral agony worse than the physical pain of their poor victims."

"We women have before us the noblest end to which a finite creature may attain; and our duty is nothing else than the fulfilment of the whole moral law, the attainment of every human virtue."

"He who does most to cure woman of her weakness, her frivolity and her servility, will likewise at the same stroke do most to cure man of his brutality, his selfishness and his sensuality."

"Love naturally reverses the idea of obedience, and causes the struggle between any two people who truly love each other to be not who shall command, but, who shall yield."

"She was much ahead of her time and society in understanding the causes of its degradation and in setting up a correct approach to address them. She rightly realised that without empowering women, a society can never flourish. Hence, the thematic thread that runs through all her intellectual efforts is a concern for equitable gender relations – feminism."

"Begum Rokeya had dreamt of a society where women would be magistrates, judges and barristers and that has come true as many women are already there in such posts."

"In order to silence the crying children, the people on the street would point their fingers at them and say, "Shut up, look, Mecca is going to Medina, oh!" - The besieged Jujuburis, they are Mecca and Medina!""

"I was in Aligarh till last year. Since the station there seemed to be unique in its splendor on the E. I. R. line, I used to go there every day on foot. Among other things, I saw many 13th-century burqas there. And God knows, every burqa was funny in some way or the other."

"Why did I come, oh! to this burning world, why was I born in a house with a curtain-veil!"

"The more veiled and hidden like a snail in the corners of the house, the more noble he is."

"When the train arrived, an English employee said to Haji Saheb in broken Hindi, "Munshi! You should walk with your shoes. When the train arrives, there will be no empty seats on the platform." Haji Saheb said with folded hands, "Hujur, all those shoes are not covered." The employee again tapped his shoe on a "bag" and said, "Ha, ha - all those shoes should walk." The women did not utter the word "shoe boot" at the request of the veil."

"[A woman] had gone to the house of a Bengali gentleman for a wedding invitation. As soon as they saw her [with a burqa], the boys and girls there would scream in fear and run away, not knowing who would."

""Now let us enter the Muslim society. According to the Muslims, we are 'half' of a man, that is, two women are equal to one man. Or if two brothers and a sister are together, we become 'two and a half'... You will find in the 'Muhammadan law' that there is a provision that a daughter gets half of a son's share in the ancestral property.... But we are not half of brothers in the eyes of God and mother. If that were the case, the natural arrangement would be that where a son gets ten months, a daughter gets five months!!... We enjoy the love and affection of our mother equally with our brother. There is no partiality in the heart of a mother."

""In order to deceive us, men have published those religious scriptures as "God's commandments". In ancient times, the person who was known among the ten for his talent, he tried to rule the barbarians by declaring himself to be an angel or a god sent by God.... As the world gradually became more intelligent, clever and talented men saw that people no longer believed him when he called him a "prophet". Then the great Jesus introduced himself as a part of God (the Son of God) and wrote the book of the Gospel. In it it is written, 'A woman is completely subject to a man, and her husband has full rights over her property.' And the woman, who was devoid of intelligence and conscience, accepted this. Then the great Mohammed made a law that, 'A woman shall always be subject to a man, before marriage to her father or brother, after marriage to her husband, and in the absence of a husband to her son.' And the foolish woman bowed her head and accepted that law. Sister, you see that these religious scriptures are nothing but rules and regulations written by men. What you hear in the laws of the sages, you may find in the laws of a woman sage the opposite of that. The religious scriptures are not inspired or directed by God. If God had sent an angel for the purpose of ruling women, that angel would not have been limited to Asia only. Why did the angels not go to Europe? Why did they not go from America and from the poles to the poles and proclaim this command of God: "The women shall be subject to men." Is God the God of Asia only? Wasn't America his kingdom? God-given water and air are in all countries, but why haven't the messengers spread throughout the land? If the civilized people of today believe what the barbarians believed in ancient times, then what is the difference between civilization and barbarism? Whatever the case, now we will no longer bow down to the rule of men in the name of religion."

"The main reason why I have never been able to raise my head against slavery is that whenever a sister has tried to raise her head, her head has been crushed by a blow in the form of a weapon in the name of religion or the words of the scriptures. What we did not accept easily at first, we later considered as the command of religion and made it a matter of honor."

"[That woman] once came to Calcutta. When four or five of them went out in an open motor with burqas, the boys on the street would say, "Oma! What are those?" They would say to each other, "Be quiet! They can't help but become ghosts at this time of night." When they saw the burqa's veil fluttering in the wind, they would say, "Look, look. The ghosts' bodies are moving! Father! Run away!""

"The opponents of the female education say that women will be unruly...fie ! They call themselves muslims and yet go against the basic tenet of islam which gives equal right to education. If men are not led astray once educated, why should women?"

"Your kitchen is not inferior to a queen's boudoir!' I replied with a pleasant smile, 'but we must leave it now; for the gentlemen may be cursing me for keeping them away from their duties in the kitchen so long.' We both laughed heartily."

"If today I get back with you, our conservative grandmothers will say to other women rebelling against gender injustices, Look, even a rebel like Jainab has also surrendered. I don't believe that only married life can be the ultimate success for women."

"Had God Himself intended women to be inferior, He would have ordained it so that mothers would have given birth to daughters at the end of the fifth month of pregnancy. The supply of mother’s milk would naturally have been half of that in case of a son. But that is not the case. How can it be? Is not God just and most merciful?"

"'Why do you allow yourselves to be shut up?' 'Because it cannot be helped as they are stronger than women.' 'A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests."

"Although I am grateful to you for the respect that you have expressed towards me by inviting me to preside over the conference, I am forced to say that you have not made the right choice. I have been locked up in the socially oppressive iron casket of 'porda' for all my life. I have not been able to mix very well with people – as a matter of fact, I do not even know what is expected of a chairperson. I do not know if one is supposed to laugh, or to cry."

"No anti-porn feminist I know has suggested that there is one image, or even a few, that could lead a non-rapist to rape; the argument, rather, is that taken together, pornographic images create a world that is at best inhospitable to women, and at worst dangerous to their physical and emotional well-being. In an unfair and inaccurate article that is emblematic of how anti-porn feminist work is misrepresented, Daniel Bernardi claims that Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon believed that “watching pornography leads men to rape women.” Neither Dworkin nor MacKinnon, pioneers in developing a radical feminist critique of pornography, saw porn in such simplistic terms. Rather, both argued that porn has a complicated and multilayered effect on male sexuality, and that rape, rather than simply being caused by porn, is a cultural practice that has been woven into the fabric of a male-dominated society. Pornography, they argued, is one important agent of such a society since it so perfectly encodes woman-hating ideology, but to see it as simplistically and unquestionably leading to rape is to ignore how porn operates within the wider context of a society that is brimming with sexist imagery and ideology. If, then, we replace the “Does porn cause rape?” question with more nuanced questions that ask how porn messages shape our reality and our culture, we avoid falling into the images-lead-to-rape discussion. What this reformulation does is highlight the ways that the stories in pornography, by virtue of their consistency and coherence, create a worldview that the user integrates into his reservoir of beliefs that form his ways of understanding, seeing, and interpreting what goes on around him."