Hinduism, with its openness, its respect for variety, its acceptance of all other faiths, is one religion that should be able to assert itself without threatening others. But this cannot be the Hindui...
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
It) is to one British colonial policy-maker or another that we owe the Boxer Rebellion, the Mau Mau insurrection, the Boer War, and the Boston Tea Party
Lack of preference is itself a preference. To put the true leaders of the people on the same level as princes and pretenders and pimps is not virtuous but vicious.
The British conquest of India was the invasion and destruction of a high civilization by a trading company [the British East India Company] utterly without scruple or principle, careless of art and gr...
Nehru, speaking of his country’s dreams, said: ‘Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to...
Jinnah proved obdurate: he was determined to obtain Pakistan. The Muslim League leader declared 16 August 1946 as ‘Direct Action Day’ to drive home this demand. Thousands of Muslim Leaguers took to th...
It is precisely faith that makes thinking possible, for faith offers the unthought ground out of which thinking can emerge. It is faith that makes moral and other decisions possible, opening to us the...
Islam came to Kerala not by the sword, as it did in northern India, but through traders, travellers and missionaries, who brought its message of equality and brotherhood to the coastal people.
In the conceptual scheme which the British created to understand and to act in India, they constantly followed the same logic; they reduced vastly complex codes and their associated meanings to a few...
If the Muslims of the 1520s acted out of ignorance and fanaticism, should Hindus act the same way in the 1980s? By doing what you propose to do, you will hurt the feelings of the Muslims of today, who...
I do not look to history to absolve my country of the need to do things right today. Rather I seek to understand the wrongs of yesterday, both to grasp what has brought us to our present reality and t...
History, in any case, cannot be reduced to some sort of game of comparing misdeeds in different eras; each period must be judged in itself and for its own successes and transgressions. The
Historian John Keay put it best: ‘The conduct of states, as of individuals, can only be assessed by the standards of their age, not by today’s litigious criteria. Otherwise, we’d all be down on the go...
Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of...
He put himself at the head of a movement of irreconcilable imperialist romantics,’ wrote Boris Johnson in his recent admiring biography of Churchill. ‘Die-hard defenders of the Raj and of the God-give...
As late as World War II, among the ‘few of the few’ who bravely defended England against German invasion in the Battle of Britain were Indian fighter pilots, including a doughty Sikh who named his Hur...
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 organize...
There is nothing restrictive or self-limiting about the Indian identity it reasserts: it is large, eclectic and flexible, containing multitudes. I
Whosoever comes to me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.