Shashi Tharoor Quotes

The joke is that one Bengali is a poet, two Bengalis is an argument, three Bengalis is a political party,

Secularism as principle and practice is in danger, but I do not see it falling anytime soon: India embodies tolerance and pluralism in its very essence, and I do not believe that forces of hatred can permanently overcome our fundamental secularism.

Pakistan was created by Jinnah’s will and Britain’s willingness’ — not by Nehru’s wilfulness.

The Indian tricolour was raised just before sunset, and as it fluttered up the flagpole a late-monsoon rainbow emerged behind it, a glittering tribute from the heavens.

धर्म’ शब्द को अब अंग्रेज़ी शब्दकोशों में भी शामिल किया जाने लगा है। (उदाहरण के लिए, चैम्बर्स ट्‌वेंटिएथ सेंचुरी डिक्शनरी में ‘धर्म’ का अर्थ ‘राइशियसनेस दैट अण्डरलाइज़ द लॉ’ दिया गया है।) इसे एक सन्तोषजनक अर्थ माना जा सकता है। दरअसल, अंग्रेज़ी का कोई भी इकलौता शब्द (फेथ, रिलिजन, या लॉ) ‘धर्म’ के पूरे अर्थ को अभिव्यक्त नहीं कर सकता।

(Indeed there were outstanding examples of good governance in India at the time, notably the Travancore kingdom, which in 1819 became the first government in the world to decree universal, compulsory and free primary education for both boys and girls.) The British charges against the rulers they

Pluralist India must, by definition, tolerate plural expressions of its many identities.

She said my problem was that I saw things in people that they didn’t see in themselves.

When we kill people, we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history.

Whosoever comes to me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, as the British economic historian Angus Maddison has demonstrated, India’s share of the world economy was 23 per cent, as large as all of Europe put together. (It had been 27 per cent in 1700, when the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s treasury raked in £100 million in tax revenues alone.) By the time the British departed India, it had dropped to just over 3 per cent. The reason was simple: India was governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India.

Alex von Tunzelmann’s clever start to her book Indian Summer made my point most tellingly: In the beginning, there were two nations. One was a vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swath of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semi-feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England.

As Manu S. Pillai acidly observes, ‘In other words, there is nothing a quiet ghar wapsi cannot solve when it comes to the building of a good dharmocracy.’90

When a marauder destroys your house and takes away your cash and jewellery , his responsibility for his actions far exceeds that of the servant who opened door to him, whether out of fear, cupidity or because he simply he didn't know any better.

This is my story of the India I know, with its biases, selections, omissions, distortions, all mine.... Every Indian must for ever carry with him, in his head and heart, his own history of India.