Quotes About India

Iqbal, using Urdu and also Persian, would be the poet of Islam rather than of India.

In 1947, additional factors contributed to the carnage. London's abrupt 20 February announcement that the British would very soon leave Punjab, Bengal and all of India was not accompanied by any plan of who would replace them in Lahore, Calcutta or Delhi.

between March and August there was a steady flow of urban and rural Sikhs and Hindus from Rawalpindi, Multan, Attock, Lahore and other western districts to safe havens in eastern Punjab. In all, about 500,000 may have moved east before mid-August.

By this momentous resolution the Congress had conceded Pakistan, while also insisting that east Punjab would stay out of it. (The implied demand that Bengal should be similarly divided was soon made explicit.) When the League asked for a division of India, the Congress had said no. Now, along with Punjab's Sikh and Hindu leaders, the Congress was demanding a division of Punjab.

the Empire assured Muslims and other minority 'elements in India's national life' that Britain would never allow 'their coercion into submission' to a majority government

The Empire seemed to be giving a veto on India's political advance to Jinnah, the princes and Ambedkar.

the British would not permit a government 'whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in India's national life

Jinnah was not tempted. 'India is not a nation', he commented. 'It is a subcontinent composed of nationalities.' More than willing to fight the Congress, henceforth, he would fight even more the notion of one India and seek allies in that fight.

Blood on India's streets was not what the Raj desired, yet Hindu-Muslim disputes were preferable to India-England ones.

A work of statesmanship that will affect India and Indian history for many a long year. It is nothing less than the pulling back of 62 millions of people (India's Muslim population at the time) from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition (the Congress).

elections held during the winter of 1945-46 accelerated polarization across India around the INC and the League

Punjabi political leaders who finally joined the Muslim League' apparently 'hoped that that the concession of Pakistan in name' would somehow preserve 'a united India in fact'.

If the price of peace on India's streets was capitulation to the Empire and its threats, Gandhi was not willing to pay that price.

Goods and cash worth crores of rupees lie buried to my knowledge in the palace of my late father-in-law (Qamruddin) besides heaps of gold and silver stored inside the ceiling. Complete disagreement exists among the emperor, his wazirs and nobles. If you invade India this time, the Indian Empire with all its riches of crores will fall into your hands.

The British had four distinct armies in India. The smallest consisted of the purely British 'Queen's Regiments'. The other three were the racially mixed 'presidency' armies

the Empire had enabled Sayyid Ahmed's ideological successors to walk off with the prize of a separate Muslim electorate in India as a whole.

Churchill's keenness on dividing India, his instruction to Viceroy Wavell in 1945 that he should not leave India before splitting it into 'into Pakistan, Hindustan, Princestan etc.'

These acts represent an inhuman extremism which threatens Muslims and non-Muslims alike and is rejected by a vast majority of Muslims in India and elsewhere.

the stoutest Nehru defender must admit that the Indian prime minister responded poorly and also unwisely to the challenge that China presented

Out of a total of 683,149 combatant troops recruited in India between August 1914 and November 1918, 349,688—about sixty percent—came from the Punjab.

when World War I started, and Turkey aligned itself with the Empire's foe, Germany, India's Muslims felt even more conflicted.

if a tiny percentage of the wealth stored in India's temples had been spent on defence or war preparations, invasions would have been deterred or repulsed, and resources saved. Preparation for war is sound economics: this is a thesis offered in the Swami's Gita book.

India's passivity over time, and its dislike of clash, offends the Swami. Though admitting that Gandhi broke with that tradition—recognizing that Gandhi was neither passive nor afraid of a clash

Writing in 1959 – a decade and more after Independence – an Indian editor who was bitterly opposed to Nehru was constrained to recognize his two greatest achievements – the creation of a secular state and the granting of equal rights to Untouchables.