Ambassadors Of India

"You have lost a good friend. It is unfortunate. In return, you got a maid and a drunken driver. They are in, and we are out."

"While I was going through it, although I must admit that I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, hold up with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity, I got the strength to regain composure and remain dignified thinking that I must represent all of my colleagues and my country with confidence and pride."

"I wonder if I will be able to ever reunite with my family, my husband, my little kids. I miss them. What if my children choose to study and work in the US? What if I can never return to the US, which I cannot now. Does it mean we will never be able to live together as a family again?"

"It takes centuries to make a little history; it takes centuries of history to make a tradition."

"It is true that internationalism is growing. Economists warn us that war does not pay. It is bad business. Some of us are growing pacifist by policy, though not by conviction. The spirit of internationalism is but skin-deep. Except a small minority in each country who remained heroically faithful to its principles, the rest sacrificed their humanity at the altar of their country in the last war. Even the dignitaries of the Church proved themselves to be of the school of Mephistopheles, "who built God a church and laughed his word to scorn." Churches were turned into recruiting offices. The fanatic appeals of all sides to the Almighty must have confused God himself, and the frame of mind in which the onlookers were is well expressed in J. C. Squire's quatrain : —"

"War with its devastated fields and ruined cities, with its millions of dead and more millions of maimed and wounded, its broken-hearted and defiled women and its starved children bereft of their natural protection, its hate and atmosphere of lies and intrigue, is an outrage on all that is human. So long as this devil-dance does not disgust us, we cannot pretend to be civilized. It is no good preventing cruelty to animals and building hospitals for the sick and poor houses for the destitute so long as we willing to mow down masses of men by machine-guns and poison non-combatants, including the aged and the infirm, women and children — and all for what? For the glory of God and the honour of the nation! It is quite true that we attempt to regulate war, as we cannot suppress it; but the attempt cannot succeed. For war symbolizes the spirit of strife between two opposing national units which is to be settled by force. When we allow the use of force as the only argument to put down opposition, we cannot rightly discriminate between one kind of force and another. We must put down opposition by mobilizing all the forces at our disposal. There is no real difference between a stick and a sword, or gunpowder and poison gas. So long as it is the recognized method of putting down opposition, every nation will endeavour to make its destructive weapons more and more efficient. War is its only law add the highest virtue is to win, and every nation has to tread this terrific and deadly road. To approve of warfare but criticize its methods, it has been well said is like approving of the wolf eating the lamb but criticizing the table-manners. War is war and not a game of sport to be played according to rules."

"Democracy has become confused with ignorance, lack of discipline, and low tastes … Though educational facilities are within the reach of large numbers, the level of culture is not high. It has become more easy to get into a college and more difficult to get educated. We are taught to read but not trained to think … Those who know better are afraid to speak out but keep step with the average mind. Uncivilized mass-impulses, crowd emotions and class-resentments have taken the place of authority and tradition."

"While the triumph of mechanical inventions provides a common basis for the civilization of the future, the break-down of traditional systems of thought, belief, and practice is the necessary preparation for the building of a spiritual unity. The leaven is at work among all the peoples, especially among the youth who are unwilling to be mere clay in the hands of others, be they ever so old or wise. There is a quickened consciousness, a sense of something in adequate and unsatisfactory in the ideas and conceptions we have held and the groping after new values. Dissolution is in the air. The old forms of faith are tottering. Among the thoughtful men of every creed and country there is a note of spiritual wistfulness and expectancy. If we leave aside the fanatics with whom no argument is possible, the leaders of every historical civilization to-day are convinced that mankind in all its extent and history is a single organism, worshipful in its growing majesty and capable of a capable of a progress upon which none dare set any bounds. Dante proclaimed: "There is not one goal for this civilization and one for that, but for the civilization of all mankind there is a single goal." If there is a single goal for all civilization, it does not mean that all shall speak a common tongue or profess a common creed, or that all shall live under a single government, or all shall follow an unchanging pattern in customs and manners."

"The East and the West are not so sharply divided as the alarmists would make us believe. The products of spirit and intelligence, the positive sciences, the engineering techniques, the governmental forms, the legal regulations, the administrative arrangements, and the economic institutions are binding together peoples of varied cultures and bringing them into closer reciprocal contact. The world today is tending to function as one organism. The outer uniformity has not, however, resulted in an inner unity of mind and spirit. The new nearness into which we are drawn has not meant increasing happiness and diminishing friction, since we are not mentally and spiritually prepared for the meeting. Maxim Gorky relates how, after addressing a peasant audience on the subject of science and the marvels of technical inventions, he was criticized by a peasant spokesman in the following words : "Yes, we are taught to fly in the air like birds, and to swim in the water like the fishes, but how to live on the earth we do not know." Among the races, religions, and nations which live side by side on the small globe, there is not that sense of fellowship necessary for good life. They rather feel themselves to be antagonistic forces. Though humanity has assumed a uniform outer body, it is still without a single animating spirit. The world is not of one mind. … The provincial cultures of the past and the present have not always been loyal to the true interests of the human race. They stood for racial, religious, and political monopolies, for the supremacy of men over women and of the rich over the poor. Before we can build a stable civilization worthy of humanity as a whole, it is necessary that each historical civilization should become conscious of its limitations and it's unworthiness to become the ideal civilization of the world."

"If the Upanishads help us to rise above the glamour of the fleshly life, it is because their authors, pure of soul ever striving towards the divine, reveal to us their pictures of the splendours of the unseen. The Upanishads are respected not because they are a part of Sruti or revealed literature and so hold a reserved position, but because they have inspired generations of Indians with vision and strength by their inexhaustible significance and spiritual power. Indian thought has constantly turned to these scriptures for fresh illumination and spiritual recovery or recommencement, and not in vain. The fire still burns bright on their altars. Their light is for the seeing eye and their message is for the seeker after truth."

"In the history of thought, creative and critical epochs succeed each other. Periods of rich and glowing faith are followed by those of aridity and artificiality. When we pass from the Rig-Veda to the Yajur and the Sama-Vedas and the Brahmanas, we feel a change in the atmosphere. The freshness and simplicity of the former give place to the coldness and artificiality of the latter. The spirit of religion is in the background, while its forms assume great importance. The need for prayer books is felt. Liturgy is developed. The hymns are taken out of the Rig-Veda and arranged to suit sacrificial necessities. The priest becomes the lord... The religion of the Yajur-Veda is a mechanical sacerdotalism."

"In the history of the world, Hinduism is the only religion that exhibits a complete independence and freedom of the human mind, its full confidence in its own powers. Hinduism is freedom, especially the freedom in thinking about God."

"You Christians seem to us Hindus rather ordinary people making extraordinary claims... If your Christ has not succeeded in making you better men and women, have we any reason to suppose that he would do more for us, if we became Christians?"

"If philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and found itself on religious experience."

"Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if 5 September is observed as Teachers' Day."

"My ambition is to unfold the sources of India in the profound plane of human nature."

"Man is a paradoxical being-the constant glory and scandal of this world."

"The challenge of Christian critics impelled me to make a study of Hinduism and find out what is living and what is dead in it. My pride as a Hindu, roused by the enterprise and eloquence of Swami Vivekananda, was deeply hurt by the treatment accorded to Hinduism in missionary institutions."

"The Flag links up the past and the present. It is the legacy bequeathed to us by the architects of our liberty. Those who fought under this Flag are mainly responsible for the arrival of this great day of Independence for India. Pandit Jawaharlal has pointed out to you that it is not a day of joy unmixed with sorrow. The Congress fought for unity and liberty. The unity has been compromised; liberty too. I feel, has been compromised, unless we are able to face the tasks which now confront us with courage, strength and vision. What is essential to-day is to equip ourselves with new strength and with new character if these difficulties are to be overcome and if the country is to achieve the great ideal of unity and liberty which it fought for. Times are hard. Everywhere we are consumed by phantasies. Our minds are haunted by myths. The world is full of misunderstandings, suspicions and distrusts. In these difficult days it depends on us under what banner we fight. Here we are Putting in the very centre the white, the white of the Sun's rays. The white means the path of light. There is darkness even at noon as some People have urged, but it is necessary for us to dissipate these clouds of darkness and control our conduct-by the ideal light, the light of truth, of transparent simplicity which is illustrated by the colour of white. We cannot attain purity, we cannot gain our goal of truth, unless we walk in the path of virtue. The Asoka's wheel represents to us the wheel of the Law, the wheel Dharma. Truth can be gained only by the pursuit of the path of Dharma, by the practice of virtue. Truth,—Satya, Dharma —Virtue, these ought to be the controlling principles of all those who work under this Flag. It also tells us that the Dharma is something which is perpetually moving. If this country has suffered in the recent past, it is due to our resistance to change. There are ever so many challenges hurled at us and if we have not got the courage and the strength to move along with the times, we will be left behind. There are ever so many institutions which are worked into our social fabric like caste and untouchability. Unless these things are scrapped we cannot say that we either seek truth or practise virtue. This wheel which is a rotating thing, which is a perpetually revolving thing, indicates to us that there is death in stagnation. There is life in movement. Our Dharma is Sanatana, eternal, not in the sense that it is a fixed deposit but in the sense that it is perpetually changing. Its uninterrupted continuity is its Sanatana character. So even with regard to our social conditions it is essential for us to move forward. The red, the orange, the Bhagwa colour, represents the spirit of renunciation. All forms of renunciation are to be embodied in Raja Dharma. Philosophers must be kings. Our leaders must be disinterested. They must be dedicated spirits. They must be people who are imbued with the spirit of renunciation which that saffron, colour has transmitted to us from the beginning of our history. That stands for the fact that the World belongs not to the wealthy, not to the prosperous but to the meek and the humble, the dedicated and the detached. That spirit of detachment that spirit of renunciation is represented by the orange or the saffron colour and Mahatma Gandhi has embodied it for us in his life and the Congress has worked under his guidance and with his message. If we are not imbued with that spirit of renunciation in than difficult days, we will again go under. The green is there, our relation to the soil, our relation to the plant life here, on which all other life depends. We must build our Paradise, here on this green earth. If we are to succeed in this enterprise, we must be guided by truth (white), practise virtue (wheel), adopt the method of self-control and renunciation (saffron). This flag tells us "Be ever alert, be ever on the move, go forward, work for a free, flexible, compassionate, decent, democratic society in which Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists will all find a safe shelter." Let us all unite under this banner and rededicate ourselves to the ideas our flag symbolizes."

"[Radhakrishnan describes the state of dejection he experienced as a student at Madras Christian College:] 'I was strongly persuaded of the inferiority of the Hindu religion to which I attributed the political downfall of India.... I remember the cold sense of reality, the depressing feeling that crept over me, as a causal relation between the anaemic Hindu religon and our political failure forced itself on my mind.'"

"In the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity of spirit. Whatever religion they may profess, they are spiritual kinsmen. While the different religions in their historic forms bind us to limited groups and militate against the development of loyalty to the world community, the mystics have already stood for the fellowship of humanity in harmony with the spirit of the mystics of ages gone by."

"The Gita appeals to us not only by its force of thought and majesty of vision, but also by its fervor of devotion and sweetness of spiritual emotion."

"Hinduism is not a sect but a fellowship of all who accept the law of right and earnestly seek for the truth."

""Hinduism is therefore not a definite dogmatic creed, but a vast, complex, but subtly unified mass of spirItual thought and realization. Its tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit has been continuously enlarging through the ages."

"Hinduism has come to be a tapestry of the most variegated tissues and almost endless diversity of hues.""

"In Kalki, or the Future of Civilization, he deals with the fact that although science has helped us to build up our outer life, we are not above the level of past generations in ethical and spiritual life. If anything, we have declined. Our natures are becoming mechanized. Void within, we are being reduced to mere members of a mob. There is a tendency to seek salvation in herds. For a complete human being we require the cultivation of the grace and joy of souls overflowing in love and devotion and the free service of a regenerated humanity."

"He was a philosophicalbilinguist who acted as the liaison officer of Hinduism. He was equally well-versed in Western philosophical thought and in Eastern. And he expounded the East to the West and the Occident to the Orient. But it was no mere exposition — originality in philosophy, as in 'poetry, consists not in the novelty of the tale or the light and shade distributed over the canvas but the depth and subtlety made to dominate the details. In this sense, he was original in his exposition as a poet or a painter in expression. He had found a new technique in the presentation of Oriental philosophy. He presented ultimate truths of religion in the psychological idiom of this age."

"He was not dull. A tall lanky virile Andhra, well-dressed and spic and span, he stood upright with an intense vitality filling his eyes welled with visions. His speech was pithy, — polished and precise. He studied philosophy as a scientist — not as a moralist."

"The tradition of the Rishi is alive in India even today. He was the twentieth century equivalent of the ancient Hindu Rishi; the inspired philosopher at whose feet the tempests lose their guile. When he first lit the lamp of Indian philosophy in the West it made the European savants blink. It also illumined his own face to the world. With him philosophy was not a bare catalogue of fatiguing facts and tiring theories of dead authors and their musty old writings but a fascinating story that grips the mind and enthrals the imagination. This modern Recording Rishi of Indian philosophy, unlike other historians, used his scholarship to wrest from philosophical watch-words the thoughts embedded in them and reset them like jewels in epigrams giving out a strange new brilliance."

"He had always defended Hindu culture against uninformed Western criticism and had symbolized the pride of Indians in their own intellectual traditions."

"He had raised himself step by step. When would he reach the summit of the Mount Everest of his career? Would he aspire to higher things in the life and emulate such a man as Woodrow Wilson, who has at one time a professor; and ended up as President of the United States of America?"

"Today more than ever before man realizes the bond of unity that exists within the race; he is endeavouring to employ the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the ages. He is employing modern science and technology; he is reaping the benefits, however limited, of political and economic unity; and to that extent, he is transcending the age-old barriers that have divided the race so long and is endeavouring to reflect on the welfare not only of himself and his immediate neighbour but also on the welfare of all the human race. This endeavour is in harmony with the spirit of the mystics of ages gone by. … To this generation, so tormented between modern knowledge and ancient faith, your scrupulous studies have pointed the way by which man may be saved from traditional superstition and modern skepticism. Were the thoughts of Plato and Socrates, the beliefs of Christianity and Judaism not harmonized with Hindu philosophy; were Yoga and its various stages not exposed to Western thought; had Western religion and philosophy not been exposed to the philosophy and religion of the East through Your Excellency's persistent endeavour, how much the poorer would human thought have been! In the history of the human race, those periods which later appeared as great have been the periods when the men and the women belonging to them had transcended the differences that divided them and had recognized in their membership in the human race a common bond. Your Excellency's constant endeavour to challenge this generation to transcend its differences. to recognize its common bond and to work towards a common goal has doubtless made this age pregnant with greatness."

"The institution of caste illustrates the spirit of comprehensive synthesis characteristic of the Hindu mind with its faith in the collaboration of races and the co-operation of cultures. Paradoxical as it may seem, the system of caste is the outcome of tolerance and trust."

"Asceticism is an excess indulged in by those who exaggerate the transcendent aspect of reality. Instead, the rational mystic does not recognize any antithesis between the secular and the sacred. Nothing is to be rejected; everything is to be raised."

"Hindu maxim that theory, speculations, [and] dogma change from time to time as the facts become better understood."

"The marginalization of intuition and the abandonment of the experimental attitude in matters of religion has lead Christianity to dogmatic stasis. It is an unfortunate legacy of the course which Christian theology has followed in Europe that faith has come to connote a mechanical adherence to authority. If we take faith in the proper sense of truth or spiritual conviction, religion is faith or intuition."

"It is for philosophy of religion to find out whether the convictions of the religious seers fit in with the tested laws and principles of the universe."

"The creeds of religion correspond to theories of science... intuitions of the human soul should be studied by the methods which are adopted with such great success in the region of positive science."

"The truths of the ṛṣis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but are the products of spiritual intuition, dṛṣti or vision. The ṛṣis are not so much the authors of the truths recorded in the Vedas as the seers who were able to discern the eternal truths by raising their life-spirit to the plane of universal spirit. They are the pioneer researchers in the realm of the spirit who saw more in the world than their followers. Their utterances are not based on transitory vision but on a continuous experience of resident life and power. When the Vedas are regarded as the highest authority, all that is meant is that the most exacting of all authorities is the authority of facts."

"If philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and found itself on religious experience. The Hindu philosophy of religion starts from and returns to an experimental basis. Hindu thinker readily admits of other points of view than his own and considers them to be just as worthy of attention."

"While no tradition coincides with experience, every tradition is essentially unique and valuable. While all traditions are of value, none is finally binding."

"We have spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others, sruti or what is heard, and smṛti or what is remembered. Śaṅkara equates them with pratyakṣa or intuition and anumana or inference. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change."

"The Vedanta is not a religion, but religion itself in its most universal and deepest significance."

"Religion in terms of “personal experience is an independent functioning of the human mind, something unique, possessing and autonomous character. It is something inward and personal which unifies all values and organizes all experiences. It is the reaction to the whole of man to the whole of reality. It may be called spiritual life, as distinct from a merely intellectual or moral or aesthetic activity or a combination of them."

"Religion is a kind of life or experience."

"Hinduism accepts all religious notions as facts and arranges them in the order of their more or less intrinsic significance. The worshippers of the Absolute are the highest in rank; second to them are the worshippers of the personal God; then come the worshippers of the incarnations like Rama, Kṛṣṇa, Buddha; below them are those who worship ancestors, deities and sages, and the lowest of all are the worshippers of the petty forces and spirits."

"Religious intuition informs, conjoins, and transcends an otherwise fragmentary consciousness."

"Religious intuition is a unique form of experience. Religious intuition is more than simply the confluence of the cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical sides of life. However vital and significant these sides of life may be, they are but partial and fragmented constituents of a greater whole, a whole which is experienced in its fullness and immediacy in religious intuition."

"The idea of God is an interpretation of experience."

"Conceptual expressions are tentative and provisional... [because] the intellectual account... are constructed theories of experience. [And he cautions us to] distinguish between the immediate experience or intuition which might conceivably be infallible and the interpretation which is mixed up with it."