"Do not lose your reverence for the past; it is on the past that you must plant your foot firmly, if you wish to mount high in the future. You are not a race of savages who have no past to remember. You cannot dissever yourselves in a day from the associations and influences of a past which extends over at least five hundred centuries. You cannot annihilate in a day a past national existence which has survived the annihilation of hundreds of empires, of hundred systems of religion, and which has surveyed unconcerned the downfall and ruin of many kindred civilizations. I have to make my warning so emphatic because the general tendency of European scholars, who have so great an influence over you, is to decry your past history, to call for its virtual erasure from your memory, and to lead you in the opposite direction."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
quoted in 'The Invasion That Never Was' by Michel Danino (1996)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bankim_Chandra_Chatterjee
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (also Chattopadhayay) (27 June 1838 – 8 April 1894) was an Indian novelist, poet and journalist. He was the author of the 1882 Bengali language novel Anandamath, which is one of the landmarks of modern Bengali and Indian literaure. He was the composer of Vande Mataram, originally in Sanskrit, personifying India as a mother goddess and inspiring activists during the Indian Independence Movement. Chattopadhayay wrote fourteen novels and many serious, serio-comic, satirica
18 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee →
Related Quotes
"When a man is in doubt what to do, he goes wherever he happens to be first called."
"Prose must be written in language that is well understood by its readers. The world would hardly miss those literary …"
"[N]o study is likely to be fruitful of results if carried on without a system. The majority of those who pursue knowl…"
"Woman is the crowning excellence of God's creation, the shadow of the gods. Man the god's creation only. Woman is lig…"
"[In the original edition of the novel Sitaram, the Fakir says:] Son, I hear that you have come to found a Hindu domin…"
"...this novel was written not to differentiate between Hindus and Muslims...In statesmanship Muslims undoubtedly were…"
"The supreme service of Bankim [Chandra Chatterji] to his nation was that he gave us the vision of our Mother.... It i…"
"We used the Mantra Bande Mataram with all our heart and soul, and so long as we used and lived it, relied upon its st…"
"Bande Mataram, apart from its wonderful associations, expresses the one national wish—the rise of India to her full h…"
"And Bose's tragedy came to serve this turncoat (Nehru) in yet another context. He hated India's hallowed national bat…"