Authors From India

"Sir, I haven’t resigned owing to anger against you. As far as I am concerned, serving Sri Rama is greater than this Government job. He who gives food to the whole world won’t make me starve. My late father too, retired as a Shekhdaar. But his era was different. People still had unquestioning, unsullied devotion in matters of God and Puja. But now, times are rapidly changing. I’ve worked under you all these years and I know that you are a devout and Dharmic man. However, if tomorrow a Christian or Muslim or an Englishman sits in your place, would he have the same respect for my devotional practices? What would be my condition then? I would then need to either abandon my devotion to Sri Rama or quit this job. However, Government authority is an addiction, which can’t be given up easily. Who knows how my mind will change? It’s better I quit now."

"On my return from the bazar, I asked my companion to shew me the house of a slave-dealer; so I was conducted through numerous hot streets, and after a short walk, I got into the caravansarae where the merchant resided. He received me with courtesy and sent for three women from the room next to his own. They sat unveiled, and their master asked me which of the three I liked the best. I pretended to select the younger one; she had regular features and most agreeable manners, her stature was elegant, and her personal attractions great. On my choosing her, the others retired to their lodgings, and she followed them, but sat in a separate room guarded by an old slave. The merchant told me to go to her, speak to and content her. After a good deal of conversation, she felt pleased with my choice; but told me to swear not to sell her again. She was thirteen years of age, and an inhabitant of Chatrar, a place near Badakhshan. She said that she belonged to a large family, and had been carried off by the ruler of the country, who reduced her to slavery. Her eyes filled with tears, and she asked me to release her soon from the hands of the oppressive Uzbeg. As my object was only to examine the feelings of the slave-dealer, and also to gratify my curiosity, and not to purchase her, I came back to my camp without bidding farewell to the merchant."

"Even if the linga of Viśveśvara here is taken off somewhere and another is brought in and established by human hands, on account of the difficulty of the times, whatever is established in that place should be worshipped, or the spot where it was should itself be worshipped … these acts of worship have to be performed with regard to the different liṅga that has come to occupy that spot even though the primary Viśveśvara Jyotirliṅga is not present there…and if, owing to the power of the wicked foreign rulers (Mlecchaadi Dushta Raja), there is no linga at all in that place, even so, the dharma of the place itself should be observed, with rites of circumambulation, salutation etc. and in this way the daily pilgrimage (nitya yatra) shall be performed …. Such performances are to be construed as similar even in situations of replacement of liṅga or the replacement of the pratimā (image)."

"It is our duty to remove thorns from the minds of the growing children, which will shape up as barriers for the national integration. Such thorns are mostly seen in history lessons. We can even find them occasionally in the lessons of language, social science and history. We have to weed out such thorns. We have to include only such thoughts that will inculcate the concept of national integration in the minds of our children. This committee has this great responsibility."

"‘Ghazni Mohammed looted Somnath Temple, Aurangzeb built the mosques by demolishing the temples in Kashi and Mathura, he collected jizya, etc. How do such useless facts help build a strong India other than creating hatred in the minds?’"

"‘Plenty of truths are there. To use these truths with discrimination is the wisdom of the historians.’"

"Europe will have rendered back to modern India that kindly help and brotherly service which India rendered to Europe in ancient days - in religion , science and civilization."

"One must jettison the usual academic and political frameworks to study Hindutva and Hindutva organizations."

"This is what makes Dara Shukoh important. Had he converted to Hindu Dharma he would have chosen the easier path. But he actually created within Islam a space for the Muslims to understand Hinduism and enrich and deepen their own spirituality through that understanding. In this he made the nondual unity of the Upanishads, which he strove to discover and did discover in diverse traditions, the basis. Thus, one can say Dara Shukoh represents an important civilizational peak for India. And in him there is a model for approaching Theo-diversity for Abrahamic religions—particularly Christianity and Islam."

"What we witness in Indian civilization is that it never allows religious conflicts to become fully blown religious wars against any religious sect. The basic underlying dictum that has emerged from this understanding is enshrined in the Vedic statement that the one Truth is perceived in various ways."

"The historical roots that lead up to the space for the presence of Hindutva’s own left wing within the Hindutva universe which makes it difficult to classify Hindutva as ‘right-wing’ proper."

"Thus, the Hindutva engagement with the Muslims and Islam cannot be categorized as monolithic. It has varied frameworks: from that of Savarkar to Sita Ram Goel, Golwalkar to Balraj Madhok to Malkani to Narendra Modi. The approach cannot be negatively labelled as majoritarianism or as totally harmonious.. While in the era of internet, the Hindutva school of Sita Ram Goel got traction, on ground the RSS school has more appeal and practical possibilities. In fact, the success of such an RSS appeal to Indian Muslims will also make the Sita Ram Goel school mellow down. Without expansionism and Islamism, Hindutva has almost neutral or even positive relation to Muslims in India."

"With the industrialized high-energy consuming West having to move away from the meat-based diet because of ecological compulsions, the breaking of beef-taboo in Indian food culture can easily make India another South America-like beef exporter to the West. But it will ultimately create ecological disaster for India."

"Unfortunately, even with the Hindutva sympathizers, the stereotype image of the Swayamsevak as a kind of muscular, non-cerebral automaton persists. A deeper look shows that with no State support or support from extra-territorial agencies, the thinkers from the Sangh, usually spending most of their times sleeping on railway platforms and working among some of the most marginalized sections of the society, evolved an intellectual tradition, unborrowed from Western academia and socio-political philosophies but rooted in Indian soil."

"Hindutva is often studied similar to other extreme right-wing ideologies. However, the thesis presented in this book is built on the strong foundation that Hindutva is not an ideology but a process—a historical-civilizational process."

"Hinduism stands like a huge banian tree spreading its far reaching branches over hundreds of sects, creed and denomination and covering with innumerable leaves, all forms of worship, the dualistic, the qualified non-dualistic and monistic worship of the one Supreme God, the worship, of the Incarnation of God and also hero worship, saint worship, ancestor worship and the worship of the departed spirit. It is based on the grand idea of universal receptivity. It receives everything."

"Women were dragged out screaming and pounced upon in bazaars, so that the word “rape” itself acquired a plurality, a collective connotation, and people spoke of villages and townships raped, not a single women."

"...The follies of mankind from times immemorial have led to broken homes and illogical political identities, severed selves and truncated stories, dislocated populations and homeless refugees..."

"...In the writers’ world there is much fun and frolic, and spite and praise..."

"... So for me Partition has specific subcontinental implications, but it also spans the larger world..."

"...Along with all this, today’s world, dominated by the ruthless grasping market and the questionable politics making inroads everywhere, has surrounded me in ways like never before. I have to confront it more directly and also protect my literary space from its pollution..."

"...Self-critique is always there, as part of my intuition. It is this that produces, in the event of certain outcomes, that thrill of what you call ‘surprise’. It is also the pitiless slave-driver that keeps tormenting me, saying ‘no, not this, not this.’..."

"... I do not care for writing with a worked out plan of beginning, middle and end. Creativity can be an unexpected journey for the writer also..."

"...So many things go into the making of a creative work – a linguistic-literary tradition, an entire cultural lineage, history, one’s own experience and that of others distilled through observation, new readings and lessons learnt, hope and despair and playfulness and sadness, all feeding the writers’ imagination in tangible and not-so-tangible ways..."

"... Writing emotionally-charged scenes – independent of whether they resonate with my own life – may leave me with some sort of an enervating feeling and may also produce a compensatory aesthetic satisfaction, but they can also sap me, filling me with an incredible exhaustion..."

"Gidwani’s Tipu has a political value today, especially after the Congress Government in 1974, perhaps to oblige the Muslim voters, released a commemoration stamp on Tipu, and described him as a ‘freedom fighter.’…Releasing a 50-Paisa postage stamp commemorating Tipu in July 1974, a minister of Karnataka said that Tipu was ‘a hero’ of Karnataka, ‘the defender of freedom,’ and so on. The chairman of the stamp releasing committee…wanted the writers to ‘present a true and faithful account’ of Tipu. Well… Gidwani has obliged him, rather sneakily, and in the form of a novel."

"Face behind repeated 'regime change' attempts in India with collaborators paid by The Open Society Foundations stands exposed. India's enemies are many: George Soros leads the pack. Democracy in India is strong, resilient. 2024 is not too far away and Soros will eat crow again."

"In the course of centuries the Tamil Saivas, who were vegetarians and who had looked upon the Aryas as mlecchas for their [habits of] meat-eating and drinking intoxicants and as untouchables came, by the force of juxtaposition, of aryan adaptability, and of political contingencies, to be reconciled to the ways and habits of their neighbours and to accept the authority of the Vedas, [. . .] Saivaism, accepting the Vedic rule, became metamorphosed into Vedic or Vaidika Saivaism.'"

"The Saiva Siddhanta is the indigenous philosophy of South India and the choicest product of the Tamilian intellect. [. . .] This high and noble system, based on the Agamas or Saiva scriptures, was corrupted by the puranic writers, whose sole object was to reconcile the Vedas and the Agamas [. . .] The Tamilar, overbourne by the political ascendancy of the Aryans, accepted the system, [. . .] Bhakti or loving piety, the root idea of the Saiva system, ennobled the persons, whatever their caste, colour or creed [. . .] Such a widely tolerant, ennobling, rationalistic faith has been made to assume the garb of a thoroughly intolerant, fictitious, and meanly selfish system. The Tamilar, therefore, are in duty, bound to throw off the puranic veil which dims their vision and to realise the old conception of Him as enshrined in the ancient Tamil poems based on the Tamilian Agamas."

"Even those Tamil scholars who regarded Tamil literature and civilization to be superior to Sanskrit did not demonize Sanskrit. A good example was 'Manonmaniam' Sundaram Pillai. He claimed that Tamil was superior to Sanskrit because Tamil was still used in his day as a popular language. A Tamil song by him has been recognized as the official song of Tamil Nadu. However, he never denigrated or rejected Sanskrit, and visualized Tamil and Sanskrit as two eyes of the Goddess of learning, though for him Tamil was the right eye. When Bishop Caldwell dated the seventh-century Saiva saint Thirugnana Sambandar at the end of the thirteenth century, Sundaram Pillai refuted this dating and emphatically established that Sambandar could not be dated later than seventh century CE."

"When the data and events point to the Hindus being at the receiving hands of Christians/Muslims, USCIRF filters out relevant details to portray the events in a way it likes."

"Moorthy Muthuswamy, a US-based nuclear physicist and author, brought to the notice of USCIRF the ‘data on the origin of religious conflicts in India’ and also ‘verifiable data to the attention of USCIRF that points to Christian institutions in India practicing religious apartheid on majority that are in violation of Article 23 and Article 26 of Universal Declaration of Human rights’. 41 He found that the 2006 report ignored the data provided by him."

"Psychoanalysis . . . has been insufficiently aware of its underlying paradigm and its deep roots in Western culture. The implicit model of man that underlies the psychoanalytic meta-theory is certainly not universal; the psychoanalytic notion of the person as an autonomous, bounded, abstract individual is a peculiarly Western notion. In contrast, the holistic model of man that underlies Indian mystical approaches and propels their practices is rooted in the very different Indian cultural tradition which, in some ways, lies at an opposite civilizational pole."

"I had read Kakar’s The Inner World, an exploration of Indian childhood and society that had received favorable reviews. But personally I thought his application of Freudian ideas, which had already been shown to be invalid by new research, to analyze the mind of the Indian child was pointless."

"Sometimes I think back to the events of the night of January 19. How does one depict the fear we felt that night? I found my answer much later in Art Spiegelman’s Maus, a graphic novel in which the author interviews his father, a holocaust survivor. Depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats, Spiegelman asks his father how it felt to be in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His father startles him by producing a loud ‘Boo!’ and says ‘it felt a little like that. But always!’ That is how we felt on the night of January 19."

"The slogans and the war cries from the mosque did not stop. So, in a way, every day in Kashmir after January 19 was January 19. The cries just became a little more systematic. They would begin during the night and continue till the wee hours of the morning. After a break, they would resume until late morning. Then another break and so it would go on."

"“Islamic radicalisation is not a new phenomenon in Kerala, where Muslims account for 26.56 per cent of the total population or around 9 million people,” says Dr N.P. Hafis Mohamad, a sociologist and author based in Kozhikode. “When the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was established in 1977, a few students in Kerala joined it and the organisation had units in many campuses in the state. However, during the past four decades, only a tiny section within the community has opted for a radical path, while 99 per cent of Muslims in Kerala remained secular and contributed to the social-cultural-economic development of the state.”"

"Dr Mohamad, 65, who conducted an in-depth study on the migration of Kerala’s Muslims to radical path after 21 youths joined Islamic State territories in Afghanistan, feels that counter radicalisation efforts by the state have checked the problem effectively. “Less than 60 persons from Kerala have joined the IS, with another 100 from the Gulf. These numbers do not reflect the mindset of the majority of Muslims in Kerala. In fact, there is an effort by certain vested sects to brand Kerala as breeding ground of Islamic terror outfits to meet political targets. They paint the actions of a tiny section of people as the mindset of the community,” he points out. He adds that the fall of Afghanistan into hands of Taliban forces again triggers debate on the links between some of Kerala’s people with radical Islamic groups. “Gulf money, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the ban on SIMI led to the mushrooming of radical Islamic outfits in Kerala. Ex- SIMI members raised various platforms and recruited youths to serve their purpose,” he concluded."

"I am not at all a slave of social custom. Whatever I think good for myself or the society I shall do and never retreat of fear of criticism of the people or my relatives."

"Saints (Sufis) are like elder brothers and Senior scholars (Fuqaha) are like father in respect."

"Keep intellect above your habits, and Shari'ah above your intellect."

"I developed enthusiasm for Dīn - of which tahajjud is one branch."

"The enthusiasm which I had for debating in my young days is now replaced by as much aversion for it because of its harms."

"Energizing one's intellect and disposition is not the way to success. The kindness of the Master cannot be achieved without humility."

"The reality of character is that we must not cause any form of difficulty and inconvenience to anyone, outwardly or inwardly, in his presence or in his absence."

"Without the head, man is a dead body. So too, without prayers, all other acts of worship are lifeless."

"Remembrance creates and strengthens a special bond between man and His Creator."

"If by practicing on any form of piety, someone’s heart will be broken, then practice on the fatwa (verdict of the scholars). At such occasions, to protect one’ piety is not permissible e.g. If, in accepting any gift, there is disgrace for you and honour for your brother, then give preference to his honour over yours."

"Mosques are not places for mundane activities. Mosques are erected purely for the remembrance and worship of Allah."

"Scholars are much needed as they are the backbone of religion. Scholars are more needed than Saints otherwise no one would know the religious ordinances and limits."