Hinduism can survive modern times if only the people learn to bend with the wind. People will have to find a balance between the new and the old. - Mark Tully

Whenever I go and give a talk on Hinduism, and when I say something nice about it, invariably someone from the audience will object: "I think Hinduism is a disgusting religion because of the caste system."

There is blind secularism in this country [India]. If anyone speaks about Hinduism in this country, they are branded as Hindu fundamentalists.

My connection with Calcutta stretches back a long way. It goes back at least to 1857, the year of what my maternal great-grandfather would have called the Indian Mutiny. He managed to escape the uprising in eastern Uttar Pradesh in a boat down the Ganges to Calcutta. My maternal grandfather made his living selling jute in the city. He bought the jute in what is now Bangladesh, which is how my mother happened to be born there. But she met and married my father in Calcutta. He was the first of his family to come to India where he became one of the senior partners of Gillanders Arbuthnot, a Calcutta-based firm.