Varsha Bhosle Quotes

You’ll be pleased to know that you ‘secularists’ have a successful and time-tested way of tackling free speech: I am no longer writing for Rediff since its top honcho, Ajit Balakrishnan (also involved with discredited SABRANG communications Communalism Combat, ), finds me ‘very inflammatory.’ That’s surely something to rejoice over.

Pakistan, its namaaz-raising hands dipped in the blood of Hindus and Sikhs, began as an Islamic terrorist State and continues to live up to its foundational values. Take it from Balasaheb and me: nothing will emerge from the latest "hand of friendship." Unless, of course, it is Kargil II.

Which American values can, even remotely, be called Islamic? Democracy? Freedom? Equality? Secularism? Gender equity? Freedom of thought? The right to free expression? The right to critique any holy cow? Does even one of these values exist in a single Islamic state…? Is even one of these values extended to all Muslim citizens of an Islamic state?…What would be the fate of Hindus working in Saudi Arabia if they should advocate the replacement of the word "Islamic" with "Islamic-Hindu" in all references to the kingdom’s heritage?

Vajpayee's additional generosity to Muslim pilgrims earned him, in Varsha Bhosle's unsparing satirical columns, the alias Hajpayee.

This, my friends, is the Jaziya that non-Muslims pay in "free" India, one governed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Hajpayee.