India Quotes

“Krishna taught in the Bhadavad Gita: ‘karmanyeva-adhikaraste ma phalesu kadachana’, which means, ‘Be active, never be inactive, and don’t react to the outcome of the work.”
― Anonymous, Buddhist Scriptures

“The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus Paine was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr Israel Shahak, a tremendously brave Israeli humanist who had no faith in collectivist change but took a Spinozist line on the importance of individuals. Gore Vidal's admirers, of whom I used to be one and to some extent remain one, hardly notice that his essential critique of America is based on Lindbergh and 'America First'—the most conservative position available. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“Indian food is like classical music raga- it takes time to build up to a crescendo.”
― Shobhaa De, Superstar India: From Incredible to Unstoppable

“In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Do you know about Hanuman, sir? He was the faithful servant of the god Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love, and devotion.
These are the kinds of gods they have foisted on us Mr. Jiabao. Understand, now, how hard it is for a man to win his freedom in India.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“ब्याह औरतों से आँगन छीनता है और व्यापार मर्दों से गाँव.”
― Satya Vyas, Chaurasi/चौरासी/84

“Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice

“Time spent in India has a extraordinary effect on one. It acts as a barrier that makes the rest of the world seem unreal.”
― Tahir Shah, Beyond the Devil's Teeth : Journeys in Gondwanaland

“Even as I took a long, hard look at some of the obvious downsides (Q: 'What are the three things keeping India down? A: Corruption, corruption and corruption.'
), I still felt the upsides (Q: 'What is so fantastic about the India story? A: People, people and people.') tilted the scales in our favor.”
― Shobhaa De, Superstar India: From Incredible To Unstoppable

“But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear and merge into something else.”
― E. M. Forster

“Indian cricket, and the youngsters themselves, are dealing with issues inconceivable a few summers ago. Riches and all the attendant temptations are thrown at them before they have started shaving regularly. It's not their fault. It's no one's fault. That is the marketplace. Inevitably, though, it can distract attention from the long struggle towards mastery. Cricket does not give itself away; it expects players to apply themselves, to think and study and seek. It plays tricks, too, pretends that sixes and slower balls and the other shortcuts matter. Cricket sets traps, flatters players and calls them kings when they are barely princes.”
― Peter Roebuck

“The trouble is Indians aren't used to being prosperous. We are more comfortable dealing with poverty- after all, poverty has been the staple here, and has been for many centuries.”
― Shobhaa De, Superstar India: From Incredible To Unstoppable

“Our population of 121 crore is not a limitation – it is the reason we will grow.”
― Sukant Ratnakar, Open the Windows

“Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice

“Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice

“At the last moment, the fish and I exchange a troubled glance. The murrel seems to be demanding an explanation. Alas, I am in no position to start justifying the unusual treatment. What comes next is a new experience for both the fish and me.”
― Tahir Shah, Travels With Myself

“Over the years, the British had strategically pitted the Muslims against the Hindus, supporting the All India Muslim League and encouraging the notion that the Muslims were a distinct political community. Throughout British India, separate electorates had been offered to Muslims, underscoring their separateness from Hindus and sowing the seeds of communalism. Teh Morley-Minto reforms in 1908 had allowed direct election for seats and separate or communal representation for Muslims. This was the harbinger for the formation of the Muslim League in 1906. In 1940, the Muslim League, representing one-fifth of the total population of India, became a unifying force. They were resentful that they were not sufficiently represented in Congress and feared for the safety of Islam.”
― Prem Kishore, India: An Illustrated History

“From the comfort of distance, [Non resident Indians and Kashmiris] financially and emotionally support ideologies whose consequence they don’t have to face. They are not just a nuisance. As a collective they are dangerous. When men capable of murder receive the affection of engineers and MBAs, it makes them potentially far more lethal.”
― Manu Joseph

“In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough.”
― Tahir Shah, Beyond the Devil's Teeth : Journeys in Gondwanaland

“This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“All pomp and show.” Anjali’s glare at the house would’ve exploded bricks if she’d had superhuman powers. “A fat cow needs a big barn.”
― Nicola Marsh, Busted in Bollywood

“There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades.”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice

“Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he was one of the worst flyhalves he can remember. This did not prevent him from having opinions on most things in sport.

His moment of glory came in 1970 when he predicted—correctly as it turned out—that Griquas would beat the Blue Bulls (then still the meekly named Noord-Transvaal) in the Currie Cup final. It is something for which he has never been forgiven by the powers-that-be at Loftus. Archie has played cricket in South Africa and India and gave the bowling term military medium a new and more pacifist interpretation. His greatest ambition was to score a century on Llandudno beach before the tide came in.”
― Archie Henderson

“The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice

“flaunting the Kohinoor on the Queen Mother’s crown in the Tower of London is a powerful reminder of the injustices perpetrated by the former imperial power. Until it is returned—at least as a symbolic gesture of expiation—it will remain evidence of the loot, plunder and misappropriation that colonialism was really all about. Perhaps that is the best argument for leaving the Kohinoor where it emphatically does not belong—in British hands.”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

“From my low perch, I watch the world as it passes by on these dirty side streets. There are no westerners in this corner of the city. Just locals going about their business. Weighing out brightly colored spices, walking back from the fish market, stopping at the paan shop, socializing over tea. Old men in lungis and flip-flops walking hand in hand and dirty-faced children who are all bright smiles and wild eyes. I am comfortable here. Sitting on this board, in this tiny chai stall, hidden away from the recognizable world. For the moment, I have disappeared.”
― Thomas Lloyd Qualls, Painted Oxen

“Sambit Bal may be right that this is a scandal the IPL needed. It certainly brings fans face-to-face with the tangled reality of their amusement, based as it is on a self-seeking, self-perpetuating commercial oligarchy issued licenses to exploit cricket as they please. Whether the fans care is another matter: one of the reasons Indians have embraced economic liberalisation so fervently is a shoulder-shrugging resignation about the efficiency and integrity of their institutions. Given the choice between Lalit Modi, with his snappy suits and his soi-disant 'Indian People's League', and the BCCI, stuffed with grandstanding politicians and crony capitalists, where would your loyalties lie?”
― Gideon Haigh

“India had a very long independence movement. It started in 1886, [with] the first generation of Western-educated Indians. They were all liberals. They followed the Liberal Party in Britain, and they were very proud of their knowledge of parliamentary systems, parliamentary manners. They were big debaters. They [had], as it were, a long apprenticeship in training for being in power. Even when Gandhi made it a mass movement, the idea of elective representatives, elected working committees, elected leadership, all that stayed because basically Indians wanted to impress the British that they were going to be as good as the British were at running a parliamentary democracy. And that helped quite a lot.”
― Meghnad Desai

“The true father of free India was Subhas Chandra Bose, not Gandhi.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hurricane Humans: Give me accountability, I'll give you peace

“Many elite Hindus disowned their nationhood and their culture and adopted the ways and attitudes of the victors whom they regarded as their superiors. They saved their self-respect through self-alienation. Even people who eventually came to fight the British politically surrendered to them culturally.”
― Ram Swarup, Cultural self-alienation and some problems Hinduism faces