Warren Hastings

"The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive, when the British dominion in IndIa shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrances."

"I hesitate not to pronounce the Gita a performance of great origmality, of sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled; and a single exception, amongst all the known religions of mankind."

"[Hastings] recognizes that in public he is taken to be Christian but then, he admits, in "hipocricy [sic], . . . prudence or rather necessity imposed silence." But, "I am unable not unwilling to receive and understand. What my inability is founded on I cannot to a certainty determine." To me, though, it is very clear. He cannot see anything that distinguishes Christianity from the other religions about which he knows. "Is the incarnation of Christ more intelligible than . . . those of Bishen?" Europeans prevail over non-Europeans not because of the superiority of Christianity but for secular reasons: "a free government, cold climate and printing and navigation." Christianity does not make people "better." "Let those who know the lower uneducated class in England . . . say how much more rarely crimes are committed in England than in India.""