india

"At a time when the British showed no particular enthusiasm for cleanliness, Indian women for example introduced British men to the delights of regular bathing. The fact that the word shampoo is derived from the Hindi word for massage, and that it entered the English language at this time, shows the novelty to the eighteenth-century British of the Indian idea of cleaning hair with materials other than soap. Those who returned home and continued to bathe and shampoo themselves on a regular basis found themselves scoffed at by their less hygienic compatriots: indeed it was a cliché of the time that the British in Bengal had become ‘effeminate’."

"You would, my Arabella, be enraptured at the extreme neatness of even the meanest attendant; but besides the beauty and the virtue of cleanliness, it is the only fence in the East against putrid diseases. That unerring guide, Nature, who teaches the people of the North to fortify themselves with furs against their inclement seasons, bids the inhabitants of Indostan be correctly delicate in their persons, and personal attire: to which the circumstance of all the servants being Gentoos not a little contributes; for diurnal immersion in the river Ganges is one of the strict articles of their religion, at the same time that it is a general benefit to the Europeans."

"A surprising spirit of cleanliness is to be observed among the Hindoos: the streets of their villages are commonly swept and watered, and sand is frequently strewed before the doors of the houses."

"The Brahman usually washed his hands, feet and teeth before and after each meal; he ate with his fingers from food on a leaf, and thought it unclean to use twice a plate, a knife or a fork; and when finished he rinsed his mouth seven times. The toothbrush was always new—a twig freshly plucked from a tree; to the Hindu it seemed disreputable to brush the teeth with the hair of an animal, or to use the same brush twice: so many are the ways in which men may scorn one another."

"For their part, Indians and Asians considered Westerners puzzlingly dirty. To some extent, it was a matter of merocrine sweat glands, which Caucasians have in profusion while Asians have few or none. (Because of this, they can still find even clean Westerners very smelly.) Partly it was that Christianity’s emphasis on the spirit encouraged a certain neglect and disparagement of the physical side of life, and Christian teachings, unlike those of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, ignored hygiene. And partly the difference between West and East was that much of Europe took a long hiatus when it came to regular washing, roughly from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth or nineteenth century, and non Westerners who encountered Europeans in those centuries were often stunned by their abysmal hygiene."

"Purity means cleanliness of mind and body; the latter is effected by the use of water etc. No nation in the world is as cleanly in the body as the Hindu, who uses water very freely."

""The fact that even smaller towns and villages had impressive drainage systems” remarks Kenoyer, “indicates that removing polluted water and sewage was an important part of the daily concerns of the Indus people.”"

"Cleanliness was literally next to godliness in India; hygiene was not, as Anatole France thought it, la seule morale, but it was made an essential part of piety. Manu laid down, many centuries ago, an exacting code of physical refinement. “Early in the morning,” one instruction reads, “let him” (the Brahman) “bathe, decorate his body, clean his teeth, apply collyrium to his eyes, and worship the gods.” The native schools made good manners and personal cleanliness the first courses in the curriculum. Every day the caste Hindu would bathe his body, and wash the simple robe he was to wear; it seemed to him abominable to use the same garment, unwashed, for more than a day. “The Hindus,” said Sir William Huber, “stand out as examples of bodily cleanliness among Asiatic races, and, we may add, among the races of the world. The ablutions of the Hindu have passed into a proverb.”"

"Life is about exploration: I don’t believe in God; spirituality means nothing much to me. I enjoy exploring things I don’t have answers for."

"The Indian atheist activists with whom we have spent time - as opposed to those often characterized dismissively by activists as metropolitan-based ‘talking shop’ humanists or ‘armchair atheists’ - do not simply ‘believe’ in materialism. They seek to debunk or ‘expose’ what they consider to be pernicious supernatural beliefs via skilled deployments of materials."

"I want ethics to rule and idealism to grow. That can be achieved only when belief in god and fate is done away with and consequently the theistic philosophy of life is changed. In positive terms, I want atheism, so that man shall cease to depend on god and stand firmly on his own legs. In such a man a healthy social outlook will grow, because atheism finds no justification for the economic and social inequalities between man and man."

"Those belong to different faiths and those who were not part of any religion had taken active part in our freedom struggle. This nation belongs to all people and all sections of Indian society in equal measure."

"Religion, as I saw it practised, and accepted even by thinking minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Christianity, did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it lay a method of approach to life’s problems which was certainly not that of science. There was an element of magic about it, an uncritical credulousness, a reliance on the supernatural."

"All these religions, all the religions without exception, belong to the dark ages. Their roots are in the dark ages. You bring the dark age with you. Your umbilical cord has not been cut from the dark ages."

"I'm not overtly religious, but I do bow my head and offer my respects everytime I pass a holy place. My dad always said more than learning any form of organised religion, it was essential to be a good human being first. I'm not an atheist, I'm more of an agnostic."

"I am an atheist by belief, but I did not come to atheism through rebellion against the Hinduism I was born into. Rather, through the influence of my atheist father, whose particular brand of non-religious rationalism was, I now realise, in keeping with the spirit of the late 19th-early 20th century Prabodhan or renaissance in Maharashtra."

"My father raised me without a religion and to question everything. When you are raised without a religion who automatically question everything. He never told us don’t believe in God, we just imbibed what we saw. It was more about questioning thing and trying to apply logic or scientific evidence to things. Those things are important because something has to be provable before you can say that it is a fact otherwise it is a theory. Billions of people get by on faith and it is strange the comfort the people who have faith have, it is very difficult for people who don’t have faith to get that."

"Of all the living creatures man is the most intelligent. It is man who created god, religion, philosophy and spiritualism. It is also said that extra ordinary men have actually succeeded in realising god. Some are said to have become one with god itself. I venture to ask, why even such greatmen have not found out a solution for all these follies of the world."

"I believe in only one god. My conscience."

"One cannot question Puranas or the religions. But Science is all about asking questions. Though we know all this, we are still scared to question it. So, we say that education should take us in the direction of fulfilling this objective of scientific thinking."

"When it comes to the forced inculcation of religion and the resulting abuses of children in the name of religion, the United Nations, all of its affiliated organizations, and almost all national governments remains steadfastly silent."

"I am an atheist, but being so doesn't stop me from respecting those who believe in religion. Every individual has the right to lead his or her life according to their wish and I respect that. I don't try to influence anyone or force my opinion on them. Also, my beliefs cannot be influenced by anyone."

"There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor any soul in another world, Nor do the actions of the four castes, orders, produce any real effect. The Agnihotra, the three Vedas, the ascetic's three staves, and smearing one's self with ashes, Were made by Nature as the livelihood of those destitute of knowledge and manliness. If a beast slain in the Jyotishṭoma rite will itself go to heaven, Why then does not the sacrificer forthwith offer his own father?"

"By claiming the monopoly Over the unknown Religions also split the people apart And spread hatred among them."

"I don’t follow any religion. I am an atheist. So where will you get me out of? How would you get somebody out of a place they don't exist in the first place!"

"Let us see how I carry on: one friend asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, “During your last days, you will begin to believe”. I said, “No, dear Sir, it shall not be”. I will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. For selfish motives, I am not going to pray. Readers and friends, “Is this vanity?” If it is, I stand for it."

"When I was young, I had to memorise parts of the Bible and perform rituals. It was perhaps this experience that turned me into an atheist. When I grew up, I saw people using religion to earn money and fool others. This made my belief all the more stronger. I don't, however, thrust my beliefs and ideologies on anyone."

"I lay curled up at night, unable to sleep, trembling with fear, praying to every god I knew to let him live, just let my father come back to us. But he too left, leaving behind only us children. That was when I decided, gods who don’t answer such prayers need not be called again."

"The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organized religion, in India and elsewhere has filled me with horror, and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it."

"By sixteen, I was a borderline rabid atheist. Then, things cooled down, and I decided not to be angry. I finally settled down for a rational view of the world because for me it was not necessary to demolish god."

"The characteristic feature of modern civilisation is the progressive triumph of science over superstition, reason over faith. The struggle had been going on ever since the dawn of history."

"If the scientist and the Rishi resemble each other in their inspiration, they also differ radically from each other in their conception of truth. Truth for the Rishi is essentially mystic - that is, intuitive, absolute and transcendental. Scientific truth is discursive or rational in structure, empirical in content and secular in character."

"Science is always humble. It never lays claim to the final word. It is religion that asserts, ‘I have understood it all, I have figured the universe out, now do as I say.’ Science believes in testing objects and incidents, and searching tirelessly for solutions to unsolved problems. Scientists are not to be praised for being right; they are to be praised for trying to state principles rigorously and thoroughly. Science remains objective even while it extends or overturns the work of its own giants."

"We reject the Hinduization programme in toto for two reasons. One, Hinduism has never been a humane philosophy. It is the most brutal religious school that the history of religions has witnessed. The Dalitbhujan castes of India are the living evidence of its brutality. Second, even if Hinduization expressed a desire to humanize itself in future, there is no scope for this to happen, since the history of religion itself is coming to an end."

"No fruits are produced from alms-giving or donations, no fruits from sacrifices, no fruits from Homa ceremonies, and no fruits from good and bad deeds. To those who are dead, this world exists not. To those who are living, another world does not exist. No results are produced from what is done to mother or father. There are no sentient beings of spontaneous generation."

"Who knows that the soul exists? Of what use is this knowledge? Who knows that the soul does not exist? Of what use is this knowledge?"

"Under the guise of religion the Brahmin has his finger in every thing, big or small, which the Shudra undertakes. Go to his house, to his field or to the court to which business may invite him, the Brahmin is there under some specious pretext or other, trying to squeeze out of him as much as his cunning and wily brain can manage. The Brahmin despoils the Shudra not only in his capacity of a priest, but does so in a variety of other ways."

"When are we to get into the right path of devotion to god? When I ask this, the Brahmins dub us as atheists. Believing these Brahmins and their hirelings, the ignorant people raise the cry against us that god is in danger, religion is in danger! Is behaving in this barbarous way, theism or atheism? Whatever it be, we will not be cowed down by their hindering activities. Whatever we feel right, we will boldly say. We say Hindu religion and gods are dreadful diseases. Unless they are effaced out of existence our people cannot and country would not prosper. We say what we feel."

"Religion is bound to be liquidated by science, because scientific knowledge enables mankind to answer questions, confronted by which in its childhood, it was compelled to assume super-natural forces or agencies. If the assumption really answered the questions, then religion would have precluded the rise of science. But religion did not explain natural phenomena. It simply created a new set of problems, which overshadowed the original problems of existence."

"Manu, however, has one verse that in connection with this subject is of interest, and deserves to be translated, though till now it never has been rendered into English. I refer to ii. 17, and translate in paraphrase: "The country divinely meted out by the rivers Sarasouti and Ghuggar, and lying between them, is where the (Rig, etc.) Veda arose, and hence is called brahmavarta or 'home of the Veda' in the tradition of the learned.""

"It would be impossible to convey to any one who has never been in the tropical climate the beauty, the luxury of such a scene; at such an hour, the air becomes so pure and balmy, the atmosphere so highly rarefied, the moon and stars shine with a brilliance unknown in our hemisphere. The most slender leaf seen between you and the deep blue sky is accurately defined; the waving boughs of the coca [coconut?] that seem at intervals to stir from some internal impulse are so beautifully contrasted with the thick foliage of the mango, glossy as the holly tree. The hum of grasshoppers is ceaseless, and the banyan trees are white with doves whose soft note is perpetually heard. The glorious sun is now above the horizon…it is difficult to describe such a morning in downright prose, unless it were that of Walter Scott’s novels…"

"I sat down to give you an account of the weather and climate, which insensibly led me to the consequences of it: every thing but cold is in extremes here, the heat is intense, the rains floods, the winds hurricanes, and the hailstones I dare not tell you how large, lest you should think I have the licence of a traveller. But what I always hold with reverence and awe and at the same time with pleasure, is the lightning; not an evening passes without it; it is not that offensive glare of light I have been used to see, but a beautiful fire, which plays amongst the clouds, and passes from one part of the heavens to another in every direction, and in every variety of vibration."

"Notwithstanding such concerns about the high costs and meager benefits of the vaccine, Gates, through his surrogates at GAVI, PATH, and WHO successfully arm-twisted the Indian government in 2007–8 into introducing the hepatitis B vaccines. GAVI pushed WHO to change the official policy to a universal recommendation, meaning that even countries with low disease burdens would be required to vaccinate. GAVI hoped this would reopen the Indian markets. WHO obligingly changed its recommendation to include universal immunization with hepatitis B vaccine for all countries, even those where HCC was not a problem. The Indian government obediently adopted WHO’s recommendation."

"In 2012, the British Medical Journal wryly noted that polio eradication in India “has been achieved by renaming the disease.” That year, the disillusioned Indian government dialed back Gates’s vaccine regimen and evicted Gates’s cronies and PIs from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously. After squandering half of its total budget on the polio epidemic—at Gates’s direction—the WHO reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is happening because of Gates’s vaccine program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to the vaccines he promoted. Polio had disappeared altogether from each of those nations until Gates reintroduced the dreaded disease with his vaccine... As the British Medical Journal reported in 2012, “the most recent mass polio vaccination programs [in India], fueled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, resulted in increased cases [of polio].”"

"In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. In regions where children are vaccinated multiple times, the non-polio acute flaccid paralysis rate is up to 35 times higher than international norms. The non-polio acute flaccid paralysis rate in a given year correlates to the cumulative doses of oral polio vaccine received in the previous 3 years."

"In 2009 and 2012, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Gates’s partners GSK and Merck, on 23,000 girls 11–14 years old in remote provinces of India. ... At least 1,200 of the girls in Gates’s study—1 in 20—suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died—about 10x the US death rates for cervical cancer, which almost never kills the young. India’s Federal Ministry of Health suspended the trials and appointed an expert parliamentary committee to investigate the scandal. Indian government investigators found that Gates-funded researchers at PATH committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying illiterate parents, and forging consent forms. Gates provided health insurance for his PATH staff but not to any participants in the trials, and refused medical care to the hundreds of injured girls. The PATH researchers targeted girls at ashram paathshalas (boarding schools for tribal children), to dodge the need to seek parental consent for the shots. They gave the girls “HPV Immunization Cards” that were printed in English, which the girls couldn’t read. They did not tell the girls that they were part of a clinical trial and instead hoodwinked them with the lie that these were “wellness shots” that would guarantee “lifelong protection” against cancer. That was not true. PATH conducted the trials in impoverished rural areas that lacked mechanisms for tracking the adverse effects and had no system for recording major adverse reactions to the vaccines, something legally mandated for large-scale clinical trials...."

"In 2010, the Indian Council of Medical Ethics found that the Gates group had violated India’s ethical protocols. In August 2013, a special parliamentary committee excoriated PATH, stating that the NGO’s “sole aim has been to promote the commercial interests of HPV vaccine manufacturers who would have reaped windfall profits had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the UIP [universal immunization program] of the Country.” According to Dr. Colin Gonsalves, senior counsel of the Supreme Court of India, The Indian Parliament formed a committee, and it was to be a rather surprising move, because you generally don’t often have such a high level inquiry into matters affecting poor people. And that was such an extraordinary report. I don’t think the Indian Parliament has ever come out with such a scathing report. And the government officials came out and said, “We shouldn’t have authorized this, were sorry, and we’re not going to allow them again”—and now they are back, doing their same old tricks again."

"Since 2005, the number of clinical trials in India has ballooned to 1,600 studies involving over 150,000 research subjects. Health campaigners in India have mounted a vigorous campaign calling for stricter regulation of an industry that has seen over 2,000 research participants die between 2007 and 2013. ... India’s health minister recently reported to the Indian parliament that to date, less than twenty-five family members have received compensation from foreign drug companies for loss of life. Families received an average of about $3,000 per individual – a pittance."

"I cannot also help feeling that vaccination is a violation of the dictates of religion and morality. [Pg 108]The drinking of the blood of even dead animals is looked upon with horror even by habitual meat-eaters. Yet, what is vaccination but the taking in of the poisoned blood of an innocent living animal? Better far were it for God-fearing men that they should a thousand times become the victims of small-pox and even die a terrible death than that they should be guilty of such an act of sacrilege. (Part II, Chapter VI Contageous Diseases: Small-Pox)"

"Perhaps most alarming of all, PATH did not implement any system for recording major adverse reactions to the vaccines, known technically as Adverse Events Following Immunization, or AEFIs, something legally mandated for large-scale clinical trials... In 2010, the Indian Council of Medical Ethics admitted that its own ethical protocols had been flouted in permitting the trials."