Quotes from Shashi Tharoor

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.

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

An India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us. This would be a second Partition: and a partition in the Indian soul would be as bad as a partition in the Indian soil. For my sons, the only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts. An India neither Hindu nor Muslim, but both. That is the only India that will allow them to continue to call themselves Indians.

All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes.

I make no bones about the fact that India matters to me, and I would like to matter to India.

When an Englishman wants something, George Bernard Shaw observed, he never publicly admits to his wanting it; instead, his want is expressed as 'a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants'. Durant is scathing about this pretence: 'Hypocrisy was added to brutality, while the robbery went on.' And

Gangaji's truth required activism, not passivity.

but as an Indian, I find it far easier to forgive than to forget.

India is not an underdeveloped country but a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.

History belongs in the past; but understanding it is the duty of the present.

India's rape law, enshrined in the colonial-era Indian Penal Code, placed the burden of the victim to establish her 'good character' and prove that a rape had occurred, which left her open to discredit by opposing counsel. Many rapes were never reported as a result of the humiliation to which this system subjected the victims.

If ever the Empire comes to ruin, Heaslop, mark my words, the British publisher will be to blame.

By the end of the nineteenth century, India was Britain's biggest source of revenue, the world's biggest purchaser of British exports and the source of highly paid employment for British civil servants and soldiers all at India's own expense. Indians literally paid for their own oppression.

We literally paid for our own oppression.

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.

Democracy, Ganapathi, is perhaps the most arrogant of all forms of government, because only democrats presume to represent an entire people: monarchs and oligarchs have no such pretensions. But democracies that turn authoritarian go a step beyond arrogance; they claim to represent a people subjugating themselves. India was now the laboratory of this strange political experiment. Our people would be the first in the world to vote on their own subjugation.

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 imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.' It

Mahabharata claims that 'if a man has one thousand tongues, lives for a hundred years and does nothing except describing the faults of woman, he will die without finishing the job').

When a marauder destroys your house and takes away your cash and jewellery , his responsibility for his actions far exceeds that of the servant who opened door to him, whether out of fear, cupidity or because he simply he didn't know any better.

Forget heaven and hell, yaar," he says as he leaves. "It's purgatory I'm concerned about. We call it Earth.

Pakistan was created by Jinnah's will and Britain's willingness'—not by Nehru's wilfulness.

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 organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swath of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semi-feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England.

As I was typing this last sentence, somewhat hastily, my computer's spellcheck offered 'Brutish' as an acceptable substitute for 'British' rule in India!

While God waits for his temple to be built of love, man brings stones.' Or