147 Quotes by Shashi Tharoor

Rabindranath Tagore put it gently to a Western audience in New York in 1930: ‘A great portion of the world suffers from your civilisation.’ Mahatma Gandhi was blunter: asked what he thought of Western civilization, he replied, ‘It would be a good idea’. ‘The.

India is my country, and in that sense my outrage is personal.

Whosoever comes to me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.

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 ISI may well be Pakistan’s answer to the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, Roman nor an empire: it.

If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali – a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.

The Mahabharata declares, ‘What is here is nowhere else; what is not here, is nowhere.

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, semifeudal 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.

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