The sun never set on the British empire, an Indian nationalist later sardonically commented, because even God couldn’t trust the Englishman in the dark
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.
The Empire, in Hobsbawm’s evocative words, was ‘so easily won, so narrowly based, so absurdly easily ruled thanks to the devotion of a few and the passivity of the many.
Hinduism as a faith might espouse tolerance, this does not necessarily mean that all Hindus behave tolerantly.
British under Clive defeat Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula to become rulers of Bengal, the richest province of India.
Babington
Above all, as a Hindu I belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find it immensely congenial to be able to face my fellow human beings of othe...
But it does not want
But as an Indian, I find it far easier to forgive than to forget.
When Jamsetji Tata tried to set up India’s first modern steel mill in the face of implacable British hostility at the turn of the century (he began petitioning the British for permission in 1883, and...
Then there was neither non-existence nor existence,Then there was neither space, nor the sky beyond.What covered it? Where was it? What sheltered it?Was there water, in depths unfathomed? Then there w...
The British public is woefully ignorant of the realities of the British empire, and what it meant to its subject peoples.
So Britain would fight Germany for doing to Poland what Britain had been doing to India for nearly two hundred years.
One of the lessons you learn from history is that history sometimes teaches the wrong lessons.
My China Diary and Walking With Lions, were memoirs of his diplomatic and political experiences. The
India . . . was like an ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previo...
Hinduism is great for encouraging social peace, because everyone basically believes their suffering in this life is the result of misdeeds in a past one... So Hinduism is the best antidote to Marxism.
Great discoveries, Ganapathi, are often the result of making the wrong mistake at the right time. Ask Columbus.
1891, a journalist from the Amrita Bazar Patrika managed to rummage through the wastepaper basket at the office of Viceroy Lord Lansdowne. There he found the fragments of a torn-up letter, which with...
Indeed there were outstanding examples of good governance in India at the time, notably the Travancore kingdom, which in 1819 became the