Hindu Quotes - page 10
It's a book about the history of the Hindus, from 50 million B. C. E. to the present. It says that there is no evidence that Rama was born in the place that is now known as Ayodhya and there is no evidence that there was a Hindu temple on the spot where the Babur Mosque was. And that there is no evidence that Rama and a bunch of monkeys built a bridge from India to Sri Lanka, as the Hindu Right have claimed. That's just mythology, which is lovely, I've studied it all my life, but you don't legislate on the basis of mythology.
Wendy Doniger
But when I do think about religious problems, I think in Hindu categories. When my father died, it was the first time something really terrible happened to me-and Christianity and Judaism were of absolutely no use to me. My Jewish and Christian friends would take me to synagogues and churches, and it didn't help at all. And then I started thinking about the myths I was translating at the time, which were about death-why there is death, how death came into the world, what happens when we die, speculations about karma and rebirth. The Hindu version of it made more sense to me than anything. It just seemed like Shiva as a god was more likely to be responsible for the world the way I knew it than the gods of Judaism and Christianity. Capricious, beautiful, violent, it just made more sense.
Wendy Doniger
I feel at home in Hindu temples. I like how complicated they are. Being in a great Hindu temple is like being in a forest. You can wander around all day. People kind of leave you alone. When you wander around temples when there isn't a ceremony, there's a kind of peacefulness about them, and I recognize the scenes and the icons. That's Shiva doing this, that's Parvati doing that. Whereas when I go to the Vatican, I have to have someone explain to me what the Sistine Chapel is all about. So I'm at home in Hinduism in that sense, I know what it's all about.
Wendy Doniger
The Hindus' sense of gratitude knows no bounds to Muslim rulers like Zayn al-‘Abidin (1420-70) of Kashmir, ‘Alau d-Din Husayn Shah (1493-1519) of Bengal, and Akbar the Great Mughal, who behaved towards Indians as Indians and at whose hands they could heave a sigh of relief from religious persecution. The three rulers tried their utmost to Indianize their rule and restore the dignity of Hindu community and culture, the latter essaying the uphill task of integrating Islam therewith, followed in this behalf by Prince Dara Shukoh. Who that has even the faintest sense of history can dispute the point that they were all intensely Indian, putting many a Hindu to shame in their patriotic fervour.
Alauddin Husain Shah
It is far from the truth to say that the rebellion was a communal riot, that the objective of the rebels was the destruction of Hindu religion and that the six months of rebellion were six months of anti-Hindu atrocities... All this, however, does not mean that religious fanaticism was totally absent in the rebellion. The numbers of forced conversions which did take place cannot by any stretch of imagination be explained by any other motive than religious fanaticism... One can and should, however, state explicitly that the main force behind the rebellion was not fanaticism which was simply a by-product...
E. M. S. Namboodiripad
I was, of course, angry and disappointed to see this happen, and I am deeply troubled by what it foretells for free speech in India in the present, and steadily worsening, political climate... I do not blame Penguin Books, India. Other publishers have just quietly withdrawn other books without making the effort that Penguin made to save this book [The Hindus: An Alternative History]. Penguin, India, took this book on knowing that it would stir anger in the Hindutva ranks, and they defended it in the courts for four years, both as a civil and as a w:Lawsuitcriminal suit. They were finally defeated by the true villain of this piece – the Indian law that makes it a criminal rather than civil offense to publish a book that offends any Hindu, a law that jeopardizes the physical safety of any publisher, no matter how ludicrous the accusation brought against a book.
Wendy Doniger
Some other practices discontinued by Akbar were revived by Shahjahan. Forcible conversion during war became common in his reign. "When Shuja was appointed governor of Kabul (he carried on) a ruthless war in the Hindu territory beyond the Indus... Sixteen sons and dependants of Hathi were converted by force. The sword of Islam further yielded a crop of Muslim converts... The rebellion of Jujhar Singh yielded a rich crop of Muslim converts, mostly minors. His young son Durga and his grandson Durjan Sal were both converted to become Imam Quli and Ali Quli... Most of the women had burnt themselves... but such as were captured - probably slave girls and maids - were converted and distributed among Muslim Mansabdars... The conquest of Beglana was followed by conversion of Naharji's son... who now became Daulatmand.”.
Shah Jahan
The Hindus' sense of gratitude knows no bounds to Muslim rulers like Zayn al-‘Abidin (1420-70) of Kashmir, ‘Alau d-Din Husayn Shah (1493-1519) of Bengal, and Akbar the Great Mughal, who behaved towards Indians as Indians and at whose hands they could heave a sigh of relief from religious persecution. The three rulers tried their utmost to Indianize their rule and restore the dignity of Hindu community and culture, the latter essaying the uphill task of integrating Islam therewith, followed in this behalf by Prince Dara Shukoh. Who that has even the faintest sense of history can dispute the point that they were all intensely Indian, putting many a Hindu to shame in their patriotic fervour.
Dara Shukoh
By contrast, until proof of the contrary, the carbon-copy allegation against Pushyamitra may very reasonably be dismissed as sectarian propaganda. But a 20th-century Hindu scholar will twist and turn the literary data in order to uphold a sectarian and miracle-based calumny against the Hindu ruler Pushyamitra, and to explain away a sobering testimony about the fanaticism of Ashoka, that great secularist patron of Buddhism. Such is the quality of the "scholarship" deployed to undermine the solid consensus that among the world religions, Hinduism has always been the most tolerant by far.
Pushyamitra Shunga
I don't believe there's anything in life you can't go back and fix. The ancient Vedas - the oldest Hindu philosophy - and modern science agree that time is an illusion. If that's true, there's no such thing as a past or a future - it's all one huge now. So what you fix now affects the past and the future.
Alan Arkin
The essential part of the teachings of Buddha now forms an integral part of Hinduism. (...) It is my fixed opinion that the teaching of Buddha found its full fruition in India, and it could not be otherwise, for Gautama was himself a Hindu of Hindus. He was saturated with the best that was in Hinduism, and he gave life to some of the teachings that were buried in the Vedas and which were overgrown with weeds. (...) Buddha never rejected Hinduism, but he broadened its base. He gave it a new life and a new interpretation.
Mahatma Gandhi
