Quotes from Rajmohan Gandhi

War demoralizes those who are trained for it. It brutalizes men of naturally gentle character. It outrages every beautiful canon of morality. Its path of glory is foul with the passions of lust, and red with the blood of murder. This is not the pathway to our goal

launching a satyagraha before training a cadre to keep it non-violent was 'a Himalayan miscalculation' on his part.

Though the Mongols stopped (or were stopped) before reaching Delhi, they destroyed much of Punjab.

These saints and their associates/disciples converted most of the Rajput/Jat tribes [of Punjab]…to Islam. This process of conversion, begun in the early 13th century, continued till the close of the 19th century.

India's global footprint is expanding, but inside India, interaction between Hindus and Muslims seems to be contracting and polarization sharpening

Jallianwala Bagh's dead and dying spent the 13th night with dogs and vultures.

Greed, we know, is at play in today's India. The 'me first' outlook is rampant.

A non-existent revolutionary plot was crushed by the Raj. Punjab, including Amritsar and Lahore, returned to 'normal'. And Gandhi halted his satyagraha. But the Empire's reputation was in tatters.

Baba Farid seems to have said to his disciples, 'Give me not a knife but a needle. I want to sew together, not cut asunder.

If carnage and brutality marked the Abdali/Sikh confrontation, so did guts, on both sides.

Soon both O'Dwyer and Dyer were obliged to return to Britain, but they remained unrepentant, and the honours they received from supporters at home—including Rudyard Kipling, a major contributor to a purse presented to Dyer—added to Indian revulsion.

In each territory, the dominant misl levied a rakhi (protection tax) on Sikh and non-Sikh peasants.

at times several misls together formed a dal khalsa to launch an attack on an Afghan post.

the Raj could also dangle jobs before the educated unemployed, councils before the ambitious, and titles before the rich and the vain.

Losing self-control, some in Punjab, he said, had taken to violence; losing self-respect, others had obeyed the Crawling Order.

If it came to a fight with the Empire—Gandhi had smelt that possibility—he wanted Indians to hold the moral high ground, yielding which had been part of the folly of 1857.

It is not necessary to make your children hermits; you should make them gentlemen. That would be more than enough.

Khanqas not only brought Hindus and Muslims together, but they also narrowed the gulf that divided the Muslims of foreign origin and local converts.

Dyer was held guilty of 'a grave error of judgment', the report offered weak recommendations and exonerated O'Dwyer.

Rahmat Ali envisaged a sovereign Muslim state which he called Pakistan, comprising P(unjab), A(fghania—or the Northwest Frontier), K(ashmir), S(indh) and Baluch(stan).

Congress charged that the Empire was practising divide-and-rule, its Indian and British opponents countered that the INC did not represent all of India.

Jatts, Rajputs, Gujjars, Gakhars and others—accepted Islam during the Sultanate era

Mahatma Gandhiji had unlimited courage, so he could fight against the British at the risk of his life, not by talking of non-violence only. He never retreated when it was necessary to show courage. But what is the use of finding fault with weapons when we have no courage to fight? We were only boasting about non-violence without strength

Beginning with 1 August 1920, titles were returned, thousands of students across India left the Raj's colleges, hundreds of lawyers turned their backs on the Raj's courts and, in November, prominent politicians boycotted the elections to the new provincial councils.