Justice, in British India, was far from blind: it was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant. - Shashi Tharoor

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

Our founding fathers wrote a constitution for a dream. We have given passports to their ideals.

We Indians, Arjun, are so good at respecting outward forms while ignoring the substance. We took the forms of parliamentary democracy, preserved them, put them on pedestal and paid them due obeisance. But we ignored the basic fact that parliamentary democracy can only work if those who run it are constantly responsive to needs of the people and if parliamentarians are qualified enough to legislate. Neither condition was fulfilled in India for long. Today most people are simply aware of their own irrelevance to the process. They see themselves standing helplessly on the margins while professional politicians and unprofessional politicians combine to run the country to the ground.