Religious Leaders

"One of the makers of Modern India."

"Had the God of the Quran been the Lord of all creatures, and been Merciful and kind to all, he would never have commanded the Mohammedans to slaughter men of other faiths, and animals, etc. If he is Merciful, will he show mercy even to the sinners? If the answer be given in the affirmative, it cannot be true, because further on it is said in the Quran "Put infidels to sword," in other words, he that does not believe in the Quran and the Prophet Mohammad is an infidel (he should, therefore, be put to death). (Since the Quran sanctions such cruelty to non-Mohammedans and innocent creatures such as cows) it can never be the Word of God."

"Sahebji, I am sorry I have been misunderstood. Forgive me for what I am being forced to say. The reference to freedom of speech was made by me in a specific context. It was not at all my intention to uphold the British usurpation of my country. Make no mistake. I consider the British Raj to be a curse. I stand for svarãjya [self-rule]."

"In none of the Sanskrit of history textbooks," he wrote, "has it been stated that the Aryans came from Iran, vanquished the aborigines...and became rulers."

"All Christian missionaries say that Jesus was a very calm and peace loving person. But in reality he was a hot-tempered persons destitute of knowledge and who behaved like a wild savage. This shows that Jesus was neither the son of God, nor had he any miraculous powers. He did not possess the power to forgive sins. The righteous people do not stand in need of any mediator like Jesus. Jesus came to spread discord which is going on everywhere in the world. Therefore, it is evident that the hoax of Christ’s being the Son of God, the knower of the past and the future, the forgiver of sin, has been set up falsely by his disciples. In reality, he was a very ordinary ignorant man, neither learned nor a yogi."

"In 1882, Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, protested: In the face of these Vedic authorities how can sensible people believe in the imaginary tales of the foreigners . . . no Sanskrit book or history records that the Aryas came here from Iran, and defeating the inhabitants of the country in battles, drove them away and proclaimed themselves the rulers of the country. How can then the writings of foreigners be worth believing in the teeth of this testimony? (266)"

"He made a positive contribution when he pointed out that India had inherited a spirituality and a culture which were not only indigenous but also intrinsically superior to the imported creeds and cultures. He encouraged and enabled his people to reawaken to their own inner sources of strength, and hold their heads high in the face of foreign invaders. He was the first to use the terms swadeshî and swarãjya. At the same time, the Maharshi restored the Veda to its rightful place as the permanent and profound centre of Indian spirituality, culture and social philosophy. His people had lost consciousness of this centre when they had started drawing a sharp line between nishreyasa (highest good) and abhyudaya (worldly welfare), between here and hereafter, between spirituality and science. They had become dwarfed in mind and emaciated in body because, to start with, they had separated these two from their unity in the Spirit. He did something more. He raised an accusing finger against the heavy weight of empty rituals and outmoded social traditions which were smothering India’s indigenous society. ... The Maharshi appealed to his people to throw away all this dead wood, and start breathing again in the unpolluted air of that spirituality and science for which India had been famous in ages past."

"It was years later when I read Sri Aurobindo's Bankim, Tilak, Dayananda that I bowed, in repentance and renewed reverence, before that fearless lion of a man who tried his best to rescue and revive the Vedic vision among the Hindus. A true understanding and appreciation of the crucial cultural role which the Arya Samaj played at a critical juncture in our national life dawned on me simultaneously."

"Love of India was the breath of life with Mr. Tilak and in it, he has left to us a treasure, which can only increase, by use. The endless procession of yesterday shows the hold the great patriot had on the masses."

"The Congress movement was for a long time purely occidental in its mind, character, and methods, confined to the English-educated few, founded on the political rights and interests of the people read in the light of English history and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of the country or in the inner spirit of the nation. ... To bring in the mass of the people, to find the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervor and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics. ... There are always two classes of political mind: one is preoccupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points of the moment and puts away into the background the great principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these first and always and details only with them. The one type moves in a routine circle that may or may not have an issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the directions and keeps that in its mental compass through all the deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character of the intervening country may compel it to accept; but these it abridges as much as possible. The former class arrogates the name of a statesman in their day; it is to the latter that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of mind."

"Interiorizing this notion, Tilak then went on to develop fanciful interpretations of Vedic verses to make them fit the scenario of a non-Indian, indeed Arctic setting of the oldest layer of Vedic literature. Perfectly innocuous verses about the dawn or the seasons, always read in their natural meaning by one or two hundred generations of Brahmins, were suddenly contrived to reveal references to the Arctic. It is this highly artificial and untraditional reading of the Vedic hymns which became and remains the sheet-anchor of Aryan invasion lore in European far-rightist and new-rightist circles. Tilak was no authority on Indo-European expansion history..."

"(A non-Hindu) may not perhaps go with me to the same temple to pray to God, perhaps there may be no intermarriage and inter-dining between him and me. All these are minor questions. But, if a man is exerting himself for the good of India, and takes measures in that direction, I do not consider him an alien."

""To use the words of Max Muller, we must, in such cases, 'keep our preconceived notions of what people call primitive humanity in abeyance for a time'"."

"Such consistent refusal to consider a greater antiquity for the Vedic texts, and to suggest a foreign origin whenever the occasion presents itself, has been a source of puzzlement and resentment for many Indian scholars such as Tilak (n.d.a), who "cannot understand why scholars should hesitate to assign the Vedic works to the same period of antiquity which they allow to the Chinese and the Egyptians" (56)."

"Belief in the Vedas, many means, no strict rule for worship: these are the features of the Hindu religion."

"It has been said, gentlemen, by some that we Hindus have yielded too much to our Mohammedan brethren. I am sure I represent the sense of the Hindu community all over India when I say that we could not have yielded too much. I would not care if the rights of self-government are granted to the Mohammedan community only... When we have to fight against a third party — it is a very important thing that we stand on this platform united, united in race, united in religion, united as regards all different shades of political creed."

"You can never give the Musalmans too much."

"In India there was only one natural aggressive nationalist and he was Tilak."

"...its ultimate origin is still lost in geological antiquity."

"It has been shown that Vedic religion and worship are both interglacial; and though that we can not trace their ultimate origin yet the Arctic character of the Vedic deities fully proves that the powers of nature represented by them has been already clothed with divine attributives by the primitive Aryans in their original home round about the North Pole, or the Meru of the Puranas."

"The Vedic hymns were sung in post glacial times (8,000BC) by poets who had inherited their knowledge or contents thereof from their antediluvian forefathers."

"The compilation of hymns into Sanhitas also appears to be a work of the early part of this period."

"It may be providence's will that the cause I represent may prosper more by my suffering than by my remaining free."

"The curriculum of the girl’s school should be vernacular, needlework and sanitation...teaching women amounted to the loss of nationality... English education had [a] de-womanizing impact on women by denying them a happy worldly life...hurt the sentiments of the Hindus…teaching Hindu women to read English would ruin their precious traditional virtues and would make them immoral and subordinate."

"In the early geological ages, when the Alps were low and the Himalayas not yet upheaved... from geological evidence of fossil and fauna, we find that an equitable climate and uniform climate prevailed over the whole surface of the globe. It is now conclusively proved that before the advent of glacial and interglacial periods luxurious forest vegetation... flourished in the high latitude of the polar regions where the Sun goes below the horizon from November till March, thus showing that a warm climate prevailed in the Arctic regions in those days"

"...for destroying the harmony in the villages by interfering on behalf of the peasants and betraying the moneylender."

"It was Valentine Chirol, a Britisher, who gave Tilak the meaningful sobriquet ‘the father of Indian unrest”.... Lokmanya Tilak thundered “Swaraj is my birth-right and I will have it’ and blazed the path of Karma Yoga to achieve it."

"Shatham prati shaathyam, ‘Wickedness to the wicked.’... Meet boldness with boldness; impertinence by impertinence must be met; villainy by villainy must be met.... Therefore, my friend, wise men have everywhere mentioned exceptions to the principle of forgiveness.... has made it clear that this rule should not be followed in a society, where there do not exist persons who follow the other religious principle, namely, others should not cause harm to us, which is the corollary from this first principle.... Therefore, just as the principle of non-violence is not violated by killing an evil-doer, so also the principle of self-identification [of seeing the same, Eternal Self in all] or of non-enmity, which is observed by saints, is in no way affected by giving condign punishment to evil-doers.... And the summary of the entire teaching of the Gita is that: even the most horrible warfare which may be carried on in these circumstances, with an equable frame of mind, is righteous and meritorious.... Religion and morality consist in behaving towards others in the same way as they behave towards us; one must behave deceitfully towards deceitful persons, and in a saintly way towards saintly persons.... But if the evilness of the evil-doers is not circumvented by such saintly actions, or, if the counsel of peacefulness and propriety is not acceptable to such evil-doers, then according to the principle kantakenaiva kantakam (that is, “take out a thorn by a thorn”), it becomes necessary to take out by a needle, that is by an iron thorn, if not by an ordinary thorn, that thorn which will not come out with poultices, because under any circumstances, punishing evil-doers in the interests of general welfare, as was done by the Blessed Lord, is the first duty of saints from the point of view of Ethics.... I give to them reward in the same manner and to the same extent that they worship Me.’ ‘In the same way, no one calls the Judge, who directs the execution of a criminal, the enemy of the criminal…’"

"Progress is implied in independence. Without self-government neither industrial progress is possible, nor the educational scheme will be useful to the nation…To make efforts for India’s freedom is more important than social reforms."

"Freedom is my birthright. I must have it."

"If God is put up with untouchability, I will not call him God."

"Lack of rain indeed causes famine but it is also true that the people of India have not the strength to fight evil. The poverty of India is wholly due to the present rule. India is being bled till only the skeleton remains…all the vitality of the people is being sapped and we are left in an emaciated state of slavery."

"Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!"

"In 1307 a general application was made to Clement V. for the purpose by the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, who sent one of their number, Robert de Killingworth, to Rome with that object and also by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, London, the Abbot and convent of Osney, King Edward the First, Greenfield, Archbishop of York, and the University of Oxford. ...The most interesting testimony is that from the University of Oxford, which says that he never did anything connected with the office he held or his pastoral care through fear of any man, and that he was ready, if need be, to suffer martyrdom for what he believed to be right. It also speaks of his magnificent services to the cause of science, and of the admirable character of his "regency" at Oxford. What was the precise influence which prevented his canonisation is unknown, though his attitude of sturdy independence may have contributed to the result."

"The treatise on light (De luce)... reflects a significant influence of Aristotle's scientific thinking. ...Its model of the expanding universe stimulated speculation as to whether in 1927... was aware of Grosseteste's thinking when he introduced the modern 'Big Bang' model... Grosseteste develops the consequences of his metaphysics of light towards a physics of light... This connection between the perfect heavens and the imperfect earth is an astonishing intellectual feat, rooted on the premise that there exists a fundamental unity..."

"He was a man of excellent wisdom, and of most lucid power of teaching, as well as a pattern of all virtue. The good abilities which he had from nature he cultivated by the precepts of Scripture, so as to form a noble soul. When he was Master of Arts he wrote briefly upon the 'Book of Posterior Analytics.' He also put forth treatises on the 'Sphere,' the 'Art of Reckoning,' and many other things useful in philosophy. He was a doctor skilled in three tongues, the Latin, the Hebrew, and the Greek; and many things did he bring forth from the tongue of the Hebrews and caused many to be translated from the Greek."

"Grosseteste's experimental method was quite different from a method of controlled experiment. Grosseteste made no use of such a method in his writings, deriving his conclusions on the basis of a mix of considerations, appealing to authority and everyday observation (the Latin “experimentum”). He made use of thought experiments and certain metaphysical assumptions, such as the assumption of a principle of “least action.”"

"A large number of writings are ascribed to him; allowing for the fact that some are probably apocryphal, his literary activity must have been tremendous. He wrote commentaries on the Posterior Analytics, and on the Physics of Aristotle. His treatise on the compotus (c. 1232) includes a discussion of the reform of the calendar, which was repeatedly quoted by subsequent writers from Bacon to Peter of Ailly. … The majority of his scientific treatises deal with physical and meteorological questions. ...He was much concerned with the complex subject called "perspective" and with optical questions in general. He was well aware of the magnifying properties of lenses, a knowledge which he probably transmitted to Bacon. (Which suggests that other items of Bacon's encyclopedic knowledge were probably obtained from Grosseteste). Many of these physical writings were ascribed by Bacon collectively to Grosseteste and to Adam Marsh. Grosseteste... showed interest in astrology and alchemy, but was remarkably free from magical fancies."

"His main reason for advocating the study of Hebrew was to promote the conversion of the Jews. He was not hostile to the latter, and saved many of them from being massacred. ...Robert was not simply a great scholar, but a courageous man. He did not fear to repress the evil tendencies of his flock, nor reprove those of the Roman curia."

"To compare him to the modern doctors is as the comparison of the sun to the moon when it is eclipsed."

"Lux was probably Grosseteste's ingenious substitute for the immaterial pneuma of the Neoplatonists and the 'animal spirits' of medical writers."

"He lived in a corrupt age, and he aspired to be the great reformer of the Church of his day as his friend Simon de Montfort was of the State. ...Robert Grosseteste was also the most learned man of his time, not only in England, but in all Europe, and one of the most voluminous writers that England has produced. He was the greatest theologian, the greatest natural philosopher, the greatest master of language, of his day. His works which are almost all still imprinted are more than 200 in number and are upon almost every subject of theology and science."

"The name which he afterwards acquired being doubtless due to the peculiarity of his personal appearance, the largeness of his head. Matthew Paris speaks of him as "Robert who is known by the surname of Grosseteste," or "Robert called Great-Head." Nicholas Trivet says, "he was surnamed by many Great-Head.""

"Robert Grossetest... described a compelling, unified version of the universe in which light was the fundamental force. Differing from Aristotle and others who had argued that heavenly bodies consisted of some pure, quintessential substance unlike any found on Earth, Grosseteste maintained that the stars themselves are composed of the four earthly elements. Like the attraction of a lump of iron to a magnet, light from the stars attracts comets, which themselves are a form of purified fire. His model also explained the moon's influence on the tides in terms of the way its light causes water to swell and move upward."

"He was an open confuter of both Pope and King, the corrector of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the supporter of scholars, a preacher to the people, a persecutor of the incontinent, the unwearied student of the Scriptures, a hammer and despiser of the Romans. At the table of bodily refreshment he was hospitable, eloquent, courteous, pleasant, and affable; at the spiritual table devout, tearful, and contrite. In the episcopal office he was sedulous, dignified, and indefatigable."

"Light, according to Grosseteste, was the first form of corporeity, and from it all else followed. Multiplying itself from a single point infinitely and equally on all sides, light formed a sphere and together with this action arose matter. Following the expansion of light to its ultimate extent came a phase differentiation caused by condensation and rarefaction, which led in turn to the separation of the heavens and earth..."

"There is scarcely a character in English history whose fame has been more constant, both during and after his life, than Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to 1253. As we find his advice sought universally during his lifetime, and his example spoken of as that which almost all the other prelates of his day followed, so was it also after his death. If threats from Rome and excommunications from Canterbury fell harmlessly upon him while alive, his example nerved others in subsequent years—as in the case of Sewal, Archbishop of York—to bear even worse attacks without giving way. And probably no one has had a greater influence upon English thought and English literature for the two centuries which followed his time; few books will be found that do not contain some quotations from Lincolniensis, 'the great clerk, Grostest.'"

"Grosseteste aimed consciously at producing a synthesis of the cosmogony of Genesis and the cosmology of [ Aristotle's ] De Caelo. ...His intution led him to the conviction that mathematics, far from being an abstraction from aspects of the physically real, is the very internal texture of the natural world, presiding over its coming to be and controlling its functioning, that, in the words of Kepler, 'Ubi materia, ibi geometria' [Where there is matter, there is geometry]. Of course, this faith was metaphysical; but then so to was much of the high-level inspiration of scientists in the seventeenth century. It was abstract, because the mathematical structure of reality is not given to the senses, but intuited in or believed by the mind. What it afforded was not so much scientific results as delight in the pure understanding of the essence of things, and, what Grosseteste valued most of all, a glimpse beyond the beauty of the harmonious textura of things to the mind of the primus numerator [premier calculator], the lux prima et inaccessibilus [first and inaccessible light]. The novel aspect of Grosseteste's world-system goes back entirely to this conception of God as the great calculator. For the first time, it would appear, in the history of Christian belief, God is addressed as a mathematician whose ideas for creation are mathematical operations realizable in matter and form."

"Robert Grosseteste. Robert Grosthead or Greathead. Robert Grosse capitas Lincolniensis. ...first chancellor of the University of Oxford; first lecturer to the Oxford Franciscans. ...English mathamatician, astronomer, physicist, philosopher, translator from Greek into Latin. He was the main organizer of philosophical studies at Oxford, and his influence was strongly felt in England for at least a couple of centuries. Nor was it limited to England. His insistence on the necessity of studying Greek and basing natural philosophy upon mathematics and experiment was extremely beneficial and far-reaching; in this he was clearly the forerunner of his most famous pupil, Roger Bacon. We may say that he influenced the whole western world, partly through his own writings, and partly through these new tendencies emphasized by Bacon and others."

"In the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste wrote a book on the rainbow that began an outburst of European speculation parallel to the equally rich Arab work."