"The history of India for many centuries had been happier, less fierce, and more
dreamlike than any other history. In these favourable conditions, they built a
character - meditative and peaceful and a nation of philosophers such as could nowhere
have existed except in India."
“I have three visions for India.”
“ In 3000 years of our history people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds.From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history and tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why?
Because we respect the freedom of others. That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM. I believe that India got its first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of independence. It is this freedom that we must protect and nurture and build on. If we are not free, no one will respect us. “My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT.
For fifty years we have been a developing nation. It is time we see ourselves as a developed nation. We are among top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have 10% growth rate in most areas. Our poverty levels are falling. Our achievements are being globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as a developed nation, self-reliant and self-assured.
I have a THIRD vision. India must stand up to the world. Because I believe that unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. Only strength respects strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an economic power. Both must go hand-in-hand.”
"In India today,
we have a lady born a Catholic (Sonia Gandhi)
stepping aside so a Sikh (Manmohan Singh)
could be sworn in by a Muslim
(president Abdul Kalam)
to lead a nation that's 82% Hindu.
I defy anyone to cite another country with such diversity and tolerance to its political leadership."
India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2050.
India’s population is expected to grow from 1.08bn to 1.63bn people, overtaking
China, which is forecast to reach 1.44bn from 1.3bn currently.
India, will also have the highest working population in the World — 700 million
people out of 1.1 billion people are young; the young population will continue
till 2050.
“Temporal notions in Europe were overturned by an India rooted in eternity.
The Bible had been the yardstick for measuring time,
but the infinitely vast time cycles of India
suggested that the world was much older than anything the Bible spoke of.
It seem as if the Indian mind was better prepared for the
chronological mutations of
Darwinian evolution and astrophysics.”
"For every human there is a quest to find the answer to why I am here, who am I,
where did I come from, where am I going. For me that became the most
important thing in my life. Everything else is secondary."
"Here everybody is vibrating on a material level, which is nowhere. Over there
[India], they have this great feeling of something else that's just spiritual going
on. “
Professor Max Muller,
(1823-1900):
"India, what can it teach us?,
"If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow, in some parts a very paradise on earth,
I should point to India.
If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most developed some of it choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life and has found solutions of some of them which will deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant,
I should point to India.
And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, who have been nurtured most exclusively on the thoughts of the Greeks and Romans and of the Semitic race and the Jewish may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more comprehensive, more universal, in fact a more truly human life, again,
I should point to India".
Mark Twain, American Author (1835-1920):
“This is India!
The land of dreams and romance,
of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty,
of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels,
of famine and pestilence,
of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps,
of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle,
the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues,
of a thousand religions and two million gods,
cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech,
mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations – the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien persons,
for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor,
bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see,
and having seen once, by even a glimpse,
would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after a lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me and I hope it never will.”
Will Durant,
American historian,
(1885-1981):
"India was the motherland of our race,
and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages;
she was the mother of our philosophy;
mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics;
mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy.
Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all".
“Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will teach us
the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind,
the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul,
the calm of the understanding spirit,
and a unifying, a pacifying love for all living things.”
