Founding Fathers Of India

"He was a versatile personality. He was a great thinker, a philosopher, and a political activist"

"All through his political career he held coveted positions."

"Coming from a scholarly family with complete spiritual background, he was a strict vegetarian, fully drenched in the Indian culture."

"When it was announced that Rajendra Prasad was attending the inauguration of the Somnath Temple, Jawaharlal vehemently protested against his going to Somnath. But Rajendra Prasad kept his promise."

"At about 4 AM....I was suddenly roused by some singing in the carriage, and, on opening my eyes, I saw Mr. Ranade sitting up and singing two abhangs of Tukaram, again and again and striking his hands together by way of accompaniment. The voice by no means musical, but the fervor with which he was singing was so great that I felt filled through and through and I too, could not help sitting up and listening."

"We have above all to learn what is to bear and forbear-to bear ridicule, insults, even personal injuries at times, and forebear from returning abuse for abuse. In the words of the Prophet of Nazareth, we have to take up the cross, not because it is pleasant to be persecuted, but because the pain and injury are as nothing by the side of the principle for which they are endured."

"The preamble to the Regulation says that women were employed wholesale to entice and take away the wives or female children for purposes of prostitution, and it was common practice among husbands and fathers to desert their families and children. Public conscience there was none, and in the absence of conscience it was futile to expect moral indignation against the social wrongs. Indeed the Brahmins were engaged in defending every wrong for the simple reason that they lived on them. They defended Untouchability which condemned millions to the lot of the helot. They defended caste, they defended female child marriage and they defended enforced widowhood—the two great props of the Caste system. They defended the burning of widows, and they defended the social system of graded inequality with its rule of hypergamy which led the Rajputs to kill in their thousands the daughters that were born to them. What shames! What wrongs! Can such a Society show its face before civilized nations? Can such a society hope to survive?"

"It is no exaggeration to say that younger men who come in personal contact with him feeling as in a holy presence, not only uttering nothing base, but afraid of even of thinking unworthy thoughts, while in his company."

"We are but artless folk and not expert in rhythm, time, and tune, but that does not matter. He for whom we sing our hymns understands them all, and he pays no attention to our deficiencies of execution."

"I profess implicit faith in two articles of my creed. This country of ours is the true land of promise. This race of ours is the chosen race."

"You cannot be liberal by halves. You cannot be liberal in politics and conservative in religion. The heart and the head must go together. You cannot cultivate your intellect, enrich your mind, enlarge the sphere of your political rights and privileges, and at the same time keep your hearts closed and cramped. It is an idle dream to expect men to remain enchained and enshackled in their own superstition and social evils, while they are struggling hard to win rights and privileges from their rulers. Before long these vain dreamers will find their dreams lost."

"I think, my Lord, if ever an Indian in these days deserved to have a memorial voted to him by his loving ,greatfull and sorrow-stricken countrymen, unquestionably that Indian was the late Mr Ranade."

"This is the land of religion, Be it be for good or for evil, we cannot do without religion. Religious thoughts are in our blood. If we try to flee from it, it will pursue us."

"The dreary alternative of agnosticism, which the young students are taught to accept as the final word of science on the grave mysteries of life and thought, and man’s hopes of personal communion with God are laughed away to make room for an inane faith in evolution and the law of collective development and progress....Hindu students especially need the strengthening influence which faith in God, and in Conscience as His voice in the human heart alone, can give. The national mind can not live in agnosticism. The experiment was tried once on a large scale by the greatest moral teacher of this or any other age. The failure of Buddhism is a warning that such teaching can have no hold on the national thought."

"...from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife."

"We must bear our cross…not because it is sweet to suffer, but because the pain and suffering are as nothing compared with the greatness of the issues involved."

"What obstacle is there apart from the religious one. There is plenty to do in the world without it."

"All the love that in Christian lands circles round the life of death of Christ Jesus has been in India freely poured upon the intense realization of the every day presence of the Supreme God in the heart in a way more convincing than eyes or ears or the sense of touch can realize. This constitutes the glory of the saints and it is a possession which is treasured by our people, high and low, men and women, as a solace in life beyond value."

"Thought that the discourses were everything – the place where they were delivered was nothing. He wanted his ideas to reach his countrymenand he had no objection to going wherever they were assembled, provided he got an opportunity to speak to them."

"He is not black nor anything like it, and we shall be surprised if he is the darkest member in the new House of Commons."

"The sting of the insult lies in the fact that a “black” means in ordinary parlance a “Negro”,’"

"[His] name – so English is his look – might be Brown or Jones, did it not happen to be Dadabhai Naoroji’."

"All I did was point out that you could not understand the meaning of the Holborn election in 1886 unless you remembered that the Liberal candidate was not only of a different race – widely separated from us – but that it was marked by his complexion...and that, in the existing state of English opinion was a very strong factor."

"However great the progress of mankind has been, and however far we have advanced in overcoming prejudices, I doubt if we have yet got to the point of view where an English constituency would elect a Blackman."

"Naoroji’s fair skin was often described as an advantage, as it meant that voters did not associate him with Africans."

"By far the larger proportion of the British subjects are black men, and to condemn a man merely for his colour was reminiscent of the ‘very worst days’ of slavery."

"The greatest gift the Parsis have bestowed on India is in your own good self."

"There is no doubt... Dadabhai served his country with a sacrifice and singleness of purpose which it may be rightly said, without exaggeration, was rare. A devout follower of Zoroaster, he faithfully followed the ethics of that Great Prophet - pure in thought, word and deed."

"One whose contributions to Britain by any standards remain memorable and who represented culture, intelligence and public spirit was Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian Member of [British] Parliament."

"Financially: All attention is engrossed in devising new modes of taxation, without any adequate effort to increase the means of the people to pay; and the consequent vexation and oppressiveness of the taxes imposed, imperial and local. Inequitable financial relations between England and India, i.e., the political debt of ,100,000,000 clapped on India's shoulders, and all home charges also…"

"If we take stock of his life and his example, may I not say with perfect justice an trust that in his career, in all he did, in all he suffered, and in all he taught, he was the Prophet Zoroaster's religion personified, because he was the man more than anybody else of pure thought, of pure speech and of pure deeds.... The Sun that rose ninety-three years ago, over India is set, but I say, it is set to rise again in the form of regenerated India, for Dadabhai lived and worked for us with a devotion which must remain for all of us an inspiring example."

"Materially: The political drain, up to this time, from India to England, of above, 500,000,000, at the lowest computation, in principal alone...The further continuation of this drain at the rate, at present, of above, 12,000,000 per annum, with a tendency to increase."

"...the deep eyes of the Hindu and considerable learning in the mystic lore of the East."

"This gem of learning belongs not merely to the Brahman class and to Poona city; and asking “Who is to be called the true people’s leader, if not Ranade?""

"Indians were British citizens with a birthright to be free and that they had every right to claim an honorable fulfillment of our British pledged rights....It is futile to tell me that we must wait till all the people are ready. The British people did not -wait for their parliament....Self-government is the only and chief remedy. In self-government is our hope, strength and greatness. I am a Hindu, a Muslim, a Parsi, but above all an Indian First."

"Gokhale has feeling, but feeling guided and controlled by thought, and there is nothing in him which reminds us of the usual type of political agitator."

"Is it vanity that I should take great pleasure in being hailed as the Grand Old Man of India? No, that title, which speaks volumes for the warm, grateful and generous hearts of my countrymen, is to me, whether I deserve it or not, the highest reward of my life."

"It was like meeting an old friend, or better still, a mother after a long separation. His gentle face put me at ease in a moment. His minute inquiries about myself and my doings in South Africa at once enshrined him in my heart. And from that moment Gokhale never lost sight of me. In 1901 on my second return from South Africa, we came closer still. He simply 'took me in hand', and began to fashion me. He was concerned about how I spoke, dressed, walked and ate. My mother was not more solicitous about me than Gokhale. There was, so far as I am aware, no reserve between us. It was really a case of love at first sight, and it stood the severest strain in 1913. He seemed to be all I wanted as a political worker—pure as crystal, gentle as a lamb, brave as a lion and chivalrous to a fault. It does not matter to me that he may not have been any of these things. It was enough for me, that I could discover no fault in him to cavil at. He was and remains to me the most perfect man on the political field. Not, therefore, that we had no political differences. We differed even in 1901 in our views on social customs, e.g. widow re-marriage. We discovered differences in our estimate of Western civi¬lization. He frankly differed from me in my extreme views on non-violence. But these differences mattered neither to him nor to me. Nothing could put us asunder. It were blasphemous to conjecture what would have happened if he were alive today. I know that I would have been working under him."

"The work that has so far been done has indeed been of the highest value. The growth during the last 50 years , of a feeling of common nationality, based upon common tradition, common disabilities, and common hopes and aspirations, has been most striking. The fact that we are Indians first, and Hindoos, Mahomedans, Parsees, or Christians afterwards, is being realized in a steadily increasing measure, and the idea of a united and renovated India, marching onwards to a place among the nations of the world worthy of her great past, is no longer a mere idle dream of a few imaginative minds, but is definitely the accepted creed of those who form the brain of the community-the educated classes of the country."

"This diamond of India, this jewel of Maharashtra, this prince of workers is taking eternal rest on funeral ground. Look at him and try to emulate him."

"Most dangerous enemy of British rule in the country."

"[Gokhale] hated foreign rule, but he did not blame all the ills from which Indian suffered on the British. He wanted her to shake off the shackles of social and economic backwardness as well as of political subjection. He wanted to turn the encounter with the Raj into an opportunity for building a secular, modern and democratic society."

"The former rulers were like butchers hacking here and there, but the English with their scientific scalpel cut to the very heart, and yet, lo! there is no wound to be seen, and soon the plaster of the high talk of civilization, progress, and what not, covers up the wound! The English rulers stand sentinel at the front door of India, challenging the whole world, that they do and shall protect India against all comers, and themselves carry away by a back-door the very treasure, they stand sentinel to protect."

"She made me what I am."

"But I venture to submit, my lord, that the consideration which the people of the Western countries receive in consequence of their voting power should be available to us, in matters of finance at any rate, through an “intelligent anticipation” – to use a phrase of Your Lordship’s- of our reasonable wishes on the part of the government."

"A taxation so forced as not only to maintain a budgetary equilibrium but to yield as well “large, continuous, progressive surpluses –even in years of trials and suffering –is, I submit, against all accepted canons of finance."

"He was of opinion that we should be able to convince the general English public, the working man particularly, that the reforms that I advanced would be far more beneficial to the English nation, particularly to the working man...If India is prosperous and rich, she would buy far more English produce and give work proportionately to the working man."

"More than 20 years earlier a small band of Hindu students and thoughtful gentlemen used to meet secretly to discuss the effects of British rule in India. The home charges and the transfer of capital from India to England in various shapes, and the exclusion of the children of the country from any share or voice in the administration of their own country, formed the chief burden of their complaint."

"...you will, therefore oblige me greatly if you will kindly direct and guide me and make necessary suggestions which shall be received as from a father to his child.... The story of a life so noble and yet so simple needs no introduction from me or anybody else. May it be an inspiration to the readers even as Dadabhai living was to me.... And so Dadabhai became real DADA to me."

"What the country needs most at the present moment is a spirit of self-sacrifice on the part of our educated young men, and they may take it from me that they cannot spend their lives in a better cause than raising the moral and intellectual level of their unhappy low castes and promoting their well-being."