Hindus

"Beneath the helmet, under that unruly curly hair, inside the cranium, there is something we don’t know, something beyond scientific measure. Something that allows him to soar, to roam a territory of sport that, forget us, even those who are gifted enough to play alongside him cannot even fathom. When he goes out to bat, people switch on their television sets and switch off their lives."

"Tendulkar is to cricket what Michael Jordan is to basketball and Muhammad Ali to boxing."

"The only batsman I would love to see by paying for the tickets and sitting in the stand just to watch him is none other than Sachin Tendulkar."

"You know genius when you see it, and let me tell you, Sachin is pure genius."

"You might pitch a ball on the off stump and think you have bowled a good ball and he walks across and hits it for two behind midwicket. His bat looks so heavy but he just waves it around like it's a toothpick."

"I have to say Sachin (is better than Lara), because he has that aura when he comes out to bat."

"The thing I admire most about this man is his poise. The way he moves, elegantly without ever looking out of place in any condition or company, suggests his pedigree."

"I don’t know cricket, I don’t know how Sachin plays. But I still try to watch him playing because I want to know why my country’s economy goes down 0.5% when he’s batting."

"You get him out and half the battle is won."

"I can imagine cricket without Sachin. But, can never imagine Sachin without cricket"

"I can be hundred per cent sure that Sachin will not play for a minute longer when he is not enjoying himself. He is still so eager to go out there and play. He will play as long as he feels he can play."

"I am very privileged to have played with him and seen most of the runs that he has scored. I am also extremely happy to have shared the same dressing room... He is a very reserved person and generally keeps to himself. He is very determined, committed and doesn't show too many emotions. He just goes about doing his job."

"I am fortunate that I've to bowl at him only in the nets."

"There are two kinds of batsmen in the world. One, Sachin Tendulkar. Two, all the others."

"To Sachin, the man we all want to be."

"When you bowl at him you are not just trying to get him out, you are trying to impress him. "I want him to walk off thinking 'that Flintoff, he's all right isn't he? I feel privileged to have played against him."

"Sachin Tendulkar means more to India than I do."

"I have delayed my shoots many times to watch Sachin bat."

"Sachin Tendulkar has often reminded me of a veteran army colonel who has many medals on his chest to show how he has conquered bowlers all over the world."

"In my several years of international cricket, Tendulkar remains the best batsman I have ever bowled to. It's been a pleasure to bowl at the master batsman even though one hasn't always emerged with credit from the engagements."

"In an over I can bowl six different balls. But then Sachin looks at me with a sort of gentle arrogance down the pitch as if to say 'Can you bowl me another one?'"

"In any profession,there are always ups and downs."

"I fail sometimes, I succeed sometimes, so that's fair enough. It's a package deal. It comes with that package:Failures and success."

"Whatever level you reach, getting better, never stops."

"Don't stop chasing your dreams, because dreams comes true."

"When there is time to think about i think,but when there is time to be with family , i try to do justice to that aspect of my life as well."

"I have never thought where i will go, or forced any targets on myself."

"It's about not accepting every little challange thrown at you. Sometimes you hold back and when it's needed you go for it."

"I have never tried to compare myself to anyone else."

"I am planning on an autobiography. People should know something about me"

"I hate losing and cricket being my first love, once I enter the ground it's a different zone altogether and that hunger for winning is always there."

"I get 0.5 seconds to react to a ball, sometimes even less than that. I can't be thinking of what XYZ has said about me. I need to surrender myself to my natural instincts. My subconscious mind knows exactly what to do. It is trained to react. At home, my family doesn't discuss media coverage."

"When people throw stones at you, you turn them into milestones."

"The Hindus worship only one God. At any religious function, the Hindus utter the dominion of one God and to Him they direct the offerings of every religious ritual or observance whatever be its form. It is only fools who call the Hindus as idolators on the ground that they offer their devotion through some image built of stone or wood."

"Let the Pundits fight among themselves; it is the Hindus who have all along called themselves Aryas. Whether of pure or mixed blood, the Hindus are Aryas; there it rests."

"We stick, in spite of Western theories, to that definition of the word "Arya" which we find in our sacred books, and which includes only the multitude we now call Hindus."

"Every Hindu may not be conscious of the finer points of his faith, but he has been raised in the tradition of its assumptions and doctrines, even when these have not been explained to him. His Hinduism may be a Hinduism of habit rather than a Hinduism of learning, but it is a lived Hinduism for all that."

"An inscription lying in the ruins of the fort area of Harihar town, Davanagere, has been dated to July 1, 1387 CE – during the reign of Harihara Raya II, the third king of the Vijayanagara Empire. The inscription calls Harihara II the ‘Hindu Raya Suratrana,’ (the protector of Hindu rulers). This is one of the earliest references to kings ascribed to as ‘Hindu,’ predating the arrival of Mughals by a century-and-a-half and Shivaji Maharaj by three centuries."

"My answer is that I am a Hindu and I love Hindu dharma. How can anyone destroy it? It provides happiness both in this world as well as in the other world. There is no other religion like it. Only a deranged person or a fool would leave it to become vile. Hindu dharma would remain in the world for ever. It is not going to be destroyed by your efforts.$"

"Most of the inhabitants of Hindustan are pagans ; they call a pagan a Hindu. Most Hindus believe in the transmigration of souls. All artisans, wage-earners, and officials are Hindus."

"For the reader must always bear in mind that the Hindus entirely differ from us in every respect, many a subject appearing intricate and obscure which would be perfectly clear if there were more connection between us. The barriers which separate Muslims and Hindus rest on different causes... …in all manners and usages they differ from us to such a degree as to frighten their children with us, with our dress, and our ways and customs, and as to declare us to be devil’s breed, and our doings as the very opposite of all that is good and proper. By the by, we must confess, in order to be just, that a similar depreciation of foreigners not only prevails among us and the Hindus, but is common to all nations towards each other… …there are other causes, the mentioning of which sounds like a satire – peculiarities of their national character, deeply rooted in them, but manifest to everybody. We can only say, folly is an illness for which there is no medicine, and the Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner. According to their belief, there is no other country on earth but theirs, no other race of man but theirs, and no created beings besides them have any knowledge or science whatsoever. Their haughtiness is such that, if you tell them of any science or scholar in Khurasan and Persis, they will think you to be both an ignoramus and a liar. If they travelled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is."

"Amir Khusrau, in his Nuh Sipihr, wrote that Prataprudra made a lengthy speech, in the course of which he said, The relation between Turk and Hindu is that of a lion and antelope, and the Turks whenever they please, can seize, buy, or sell any Hindu."

"You know the nobleness of Hindus. They fear not death or destruction. In affairs of honour and fame we would place ourselves upon the fire like roast meat, and upon the dagger like the sunrays."

"HINDOO, A person of Indian religion and race. This is a term derived from the use of the Mahommedan conquerors... In the following quotation from a writer in Persian observe the distinction made between Hindu and Hindi : c. 1290.— "Whatever live Hindu fell into the King's hands was pounded into bits under the feet of elephants. The Musalmans, who were Hindis (country born), had their lives spared."— Amir Khusrow."

"Mark me, then and then alone you are a Hindu when the very name sends through you a galvanic shock of strength. Then and then alone you are a Hindu when every man who bears the name, from any country, speaking our language or any other language, becomes at once the nearest and the dearest to you. Then and then alone you are a Hindu when the distress of anyone bearing that name comes to your heart and makes you feel as if your own son were in distress."

"The practices of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanâtana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism."

"It is this psychology, not just etymology which leads the Standard Twentieth Century Dictionary, Urdu into English, to set out the meaning of Hunood as: ‘Hindu: Slave Thief Adj. Black’; and of Hindustani as, inter alia, ‘Basic Urdu...bastard form of Urdu written for Sanskrit script’. But it would be, to risk a malapropism, sacrilegious for a secularist to see any of this."

"[A Hindu] may be a theist, pantheist, atheist, communist and believe whatever he likes, but what makes him into a Hindu are the ritual practices he performs and the rules to which he adheres, in short, what he does."

"In expounding the ideology of the Hindu movement, it is absolutely necessary to have a correct grasp of the meaning attached to these three terms. From the word " Hindu" has been coined the word "Hinduism " in English. It means the schools or system of Religion the Hindus follow. The second word " Hindutva " is far more comprehensive and refers not only to the religious aspects of the Hindu people as the word " Hinduism " does but comprehend even their cultural, linguistic, social and political aspects as well. It is more or less akin to " Hindu Polity " and its nearly exact translation would be " Hinduness ". The third word " Hindudom " means the Hindu people spoken of collectively. It is a collective name for the Hindu World, just as Islam denotes the Moslem World."

"Every person is a Hindu who regards and owns this Bharat Bhumi, this land from the Indus to the seas, as his Fatherland as well as Holyland, i.e. the land of the origin of his religion (...) Consequently the so-called aboriginal or hill tribes also are Hindus: because India is their Fatherland as well as their Holyland of whatever form of religion or worship they follow."