Khushwant Singh Quotes

Not forever does the bulbul sing In balmy shades of bowers, Not forever lasts the spring Nor ever blossom the flowers. Not forever reigneth joy, Sets the sun on days of bliss, Friendships not forever last, They know not life, who know not this.

When the world is itself draped in the mantle of night, the mirror of the mind is like the sky in which thoughts twinkle like stars.

Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.

The last to learn of gossip are the parties concerned

Morality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion

Once through this ruined city did I pass I espied a lonely bird on a bough and asked ‘What knowest thou of this wilderness?’ It replied: 'I can sum it up in two words: ‘Alas, Alas!

Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.

We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason, just faith.

The doer must do only when the receiver is ready to receive. Otherwise, the act is wasted.

India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. For the Hindu, it means little besides caste and cow-protection. For the Muslim, circumcision and kosher meat. For the Sikh, long hair and hatred of the Muslim. For the Christian, Hinduism with a sola topee. For the Parsi, fire-worship and feeding vultures. Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, has been carefully removed.

Consciousness of the bad is an essential prerequisite to the promotion of the good.

That's Delhi. When life gets too much for you all you need to do is to spend an hour at Nigambodh Ghat,watch the dead being put to flames and hear their kin wail for them. Then come home and down a couple of pegs of whisky. In Delhi, death and drink make life worth living,

I asked my soul: What is Delhi? She replied: The world is the body and Delhi its life. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

But big people’s illnesses are always made to sound big. The simple shutting and opening of the royal arse-hole was made to sound as if the world was coming to an end.

So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind When just the art of being kind is all that the sad world needs.

If the blanket of man’s fate has been woven black, even the waters of Zam Zam and Kausar cannot wash it white.

In a country which had accepted caste distinctions for many centuries, inequality had become an inborn mental concept.

We also knew that it was in the nature of an empty stomach to produce illusions of grandeur.

Nanak dukhiya sab sansar.

Under the circumstances the only honest answer an intelligent person can give to the question ‘Is there a God?’ is to say, ‘I do not know.

One Sikh may argue with one Sikh. One Sikh must never argue with two Sikhs–certainly not after dark.

According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped.

Oh the gladness of her gladness when she’s glad, And the sadness of her sadness when she’s sad; But the gladness of her gladness, And the sadness of her sadness, Are as nothing, Charles, To the badness of her badness when she is bad.

When you have counted eighty years and more, Time and Fate will batter at your door; But if you should survive to be a hundred, Your life will be death to the very core.

His mind was like the delicate spring of a watch, which quivers for several hours after it has been touched.

If you look at things as they are, there does not seem to be a code either of man or of God on which one can pattern one's conduct. Wrong triumphs over right as much as right over wrong. Sometimes its triumphs are greater. What happens ultimately, you do not know. In such circumstances what can you do but cultivate an utter indifference to all values? Nothing matters. Nothing whatever...

Nature provides that a man who slaves all day should spend the hours of the night in a palace full of houris whereas a king who wields the sceptre by day should have his sleep disturbed by nightmares of rebellion and assassination.

India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take modern Indian music of the films. It is all tango & rhumba or samba played on Hawaiian guitars, violins, accordions & clarinets. It is ugly. It must be scrapped like the rest.

little mother of ancient days: Thou hast cunningly dyed thy hair but consider That thy bent back will never be straight!

Jahan mein ehle-e-imaan soorat-e-khursheed jeetay hain, Idhar doobey, udhar nikley; udhar doobey, idhar nikley In this world, men of faith and self-confidence are like the sun, They go down on one side to come up on the other.

To err is human, to forgive divine,

In the absence of men all women are chaste.

Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.’ Iqbal

The Hindus hatred of the Mussalmans did not make sense to me. The Muslims had conquered Hindustan. Why hadn’t our gods saved us from them? There was that Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni who had invaded Hindustan seventeen, times—not once or twice but seventeen times. He had destroyed the temple of Chakraswamy at Thanesar and nothing happened to him. Then Somnath. They said that even the sea prostrated itself twice every twenty-four hours to touch the feet of Somnath. But even the sea did not rise to save Somnathji from Mahmud.

It was again to the Prophet Musa that Allah conveyed the essence of true religion. The Almighty said. ‘I was sick, and you did not come to see me. I was hungry, and you did not give me food.’ Musa asked ‘My God, can you also be sick and hungry?’ God replied ‘My servant so-and-so was sick, and my servant so-and-so was hungry. If you had visited one and fed the other, you would have found me with them.

I realized that I belonged neither to the Hindus nor to the Mussalmans. How could I explain to my wife that while the Brahmins lived on offerings made to their gods, the Rajputs and the Jats had their lands, Aheers and the Gujars their cattle, the Banias their shops, all that the poor Kayasthas had were their brains and their reed pens! And the only people who could pay for their brains and their pens were the rulers who were Muslims!

What the four seasons of the year mean to the European, the one season of the monsoon means to the Indian. It is preceded by desolation; it brings with it hopes of spring; it has the fullness of summer and the fulfillment of autumn all in one.

I am back in my beloved city. The scene of desolation fills my eyes with tears. At every step my distress and agitation increases. I cannot recognize houses or landmarks I once knew well. Of the former inhabitants, there is no trace. Everywhere there is a terrible emptiness. All at once I find myself in the quarter where I once resided. I recall the life I used to live: meeting friends in the evening, reciting poetry, making love, spending sleepless nights pining for beautiful women and writing verses on their long tresses which held me captive. That was life! What is there left of it? Nothing.

The eye hath ruined me,’ the heart complained. ‘The heart has lost me,’ the eye replied. I know not which told the truth, which lied Between, the two, it was Meer who died.

In America, they make a lot of fuss over little things.

Love is an elusive concept and means different things to different people.

Not forever reigneth joy, Sets the sun on days of bliss, Friendships not forever last, They know not life, who know not this.

You have only one life to live. Live it to the full. Time flies as fast as a bird on the wing.

There is no wine in this world as heady as applause.

Unless a miracle saves us,' Khushwant Singh writes, 'the country will break up. It will not be Pakistan or any other foreign power that will destroy us; we will commit hara-kiri.

A Turk for toughness, for hands that never tire; An Indian for her rounded bosom bursting with milk; A Persian for her tight crotch and her coquetry; An Uzbeg to thrash as a lesson for the three.

But if they asked me ‘Abdullah when will you become a true Muslim?’ I would reply ‘Soon, if that be the will of God— Inshallah.’ If anyone asked me whether we were Hindus or Mussalmans, we would reply we were both. Nizamuddin was our umbrella against the burning sun of Muslim bigotry and the downpour of Hindu contempt.

Not forever lasts the spring Nor ever blossom flowers. Not forever reigneth joy, Sets the sun on days of bliss, Friendships not forever last, They know not life, who know not this. ‘They know not life, who know not this,

Your principle should be to see everything and say nothing. The world changes so rapidly that if you want to get on you cannot afford to align yourself with any person or point of view. Even if you feel strongly about something, learn to keep silent.

India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. For the Hindu, it means little besides caste and cow-protection. For the Muslim, circumcision and kosher meat. For the Sikh, long hair and hatred of the Muslim. For the Christian, Hinduism with a sola topee. For the Parsi, fire-worship and feeding vultures. Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, has been carefully removed. Take

The woman wants the man to love her for ever and ever. She deliberately shuts her eyes to those two terrible enemies — Time and Change. Men are more realistic. They know that all things pass. And yet, it’s precisely out of this tension between the two sexes that civilization has evolved. Had this not been present, man would have become extinct like the many animals who were overtaken by this fate. Why do I say this? Because I see this “push” and “pull” as masculine and feminine principles, respectively, both of which are essential for the survival of the human race.

And all the mumbo-jumbo of reincarnation. Man into ox into ape into beetle into eight million four hundred thousand kinds of animate things. Proof? We do not go in for such pedestrian pastimes as proof! That is Western. We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason, just faith.

In Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, the bloody violence sweeping India after partition has not yet touched Mano Majra, a small village of Muslims and Sikhs on the India-Pakistan border. But in the summer of 1947, the murder of a Hindu moneylender and the arrival of a trainful of dead Sikhs set off a tragic chain of events.

Bombay, you will be told, is the only city India has, in the sense that the word city is understood in the West. Other Indian metropolises like Calcutta, Madras and Delhi are like oversized villages. It is true that Bombay has many more high-rise buildings than any other Indian city: when you approach it by the sea it looks like a miniature New York. It has other things to justify its city status: it is congested, it has traffic jams at all hours of the day, it is highly polluted and many parts of it stink.

A modern fad which has gained widespread acceptance amongst the semi-educated who wish to appear secular is the practice of meditation. They proclaim with an air of smug superiority, ‘Main mandir-vandir nahin jaata, meditate karta hoon (I don’t go to temples or other such places, I meditate).’ The exercise involves sitting lotus-pose (padma asana), regulating one’s breathing and making your mind go blank to prevent it from ‘jumping about like monkeys’ from one (thought) branch to another. This intense concentration awakens the kundalini serpent coiled at the base of the spine. It travels upwards through chakras (circles) till it reaches its destination in the cranium. Then the kundalini is fully jaagrit (roused) and the person is assured to have reached his goal. What does meditation achieve? The usual answer is ‘peace of mind’. If you probe further, ‘and what does peace of mind achieve?’, you will get no answer because there is none. Peace of mind is a sterile concept which achieves nothing. The exercise may be justified as therapy for those with disturbed minds or those suffering from hypertension, but there is no evidence to prove that it enhances creativity. On the contrary it can be established by statistical data that all the great works of art, literature, science and music were works of highly agitated minds, at times minds on the verge of collapse. Allama Iqbal’s short prayer is pertinent: Khuda tujhey kisee toofaan say aashna kar dey Keh terey beher kee maujon mein iztiraab naheen (May God bring a storm in your life, There is no agitation in the waves of your life’s ocean.)

The Indian peasant is the world’s champion shitter. Stacks of chappaties and mounds of mustard leaf-mash down the hatch twice a day; stacks of shit a.m. and p.m.

Masjid ddhaa dey, Mandar ddhaa dey Ddhaa dey jo kuchh ddhenda. Ik kisey da dil na ddhavein Rabb dilaan vicch rehndaa

She had many shortcomings, but perhaps that alone was what made her human. She may not have been a likeable person, but she was, in her own way, a woman to be loved and admired.

There is no crime in anyone’s blood any more than there is goodness in the blood of others,

Life is somewhat like a line drawing, Appearances a kind of trust, This period of grace we call age; Examine it carefully! It is a kind of waiting.

Passions have made mortals of us men If men were not slaves of passion They would have been Gods, each one.

The world forgives a drunkard.

A Sikh woman takes the surname Kaur on baptism. Kaur was also a common surname for Rajput women and means both a princess and lioness.

Men have many faults, women only two: Everything they say, and everything they do.

हवा नाम को भी नहीं थी, एक पत्ता तक नहीं हिल रहा था।

how much of what he told me of his past was true and how much he made up to hold my interest.

Morality, Meet Singhji, is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.

ज़िंदगी तेज़गाम भागी जा रही है मुझे पता नहीं यह कहां रुकेगी लगाम मेरे हाथ में नहीं है रकाब में पैर नहीं हैं ।

हिकायते-हस्ती सुनी तो दरमियां से सुनी; न इब्तिदा की खबर है न इन्तहां मालूम

Champagne flowed like the Jamuna in flood.

poverty which had celebrated a hundred thousand silver and golden jubilees.

Passions have made mortals of us men. If men were not slaves of passion, they would have been Gods, each one.

What the four seasons of the year mean to the European, the one season of monsoon means to the Indian.

Indians do not believe in privacy; they are a nosey people and the one thing they will not do is mind their own business.

We are a nation of fence-sitters, face-flatterers and back-biters.

How downhearted was Meer at night! Whatever came to his lips became a cry for help. When he started on the path of love, he was like fire; Now it’s ended he is a heap of ashes on a pyre.

The truly good and the great are not diminished when their faults are exposed; on the contrary, they earn greater respect for rising to admirable heights despite their very human flaws. I

To know India and her peoples, one has to know the monsoon. one has to know the monsoon. It is not enough to read about it in books, or see it on the cinema screen, or hear someone talk about it. It has to be a personal experience because nothing short of living through it can fully convey all it means to a people for whom it is not only the source of life, but also their most exciting impact with nature.

The Muslims had become masters of Hindustan. They were quite willing to let us Hindus live our lives as we wanted to provided we recognized them as our rulers. But the Hindus were full of foolish pride. ‘This is our country!’ they said. ‘We will drive out these cow-killers and destroyers of our temples.’ They were especially contemptuous towards Hindus who had embraced Islam and treated them worse than untouchables.

Voh waqt bhee deykha taareekh kee gharion nay Lamhon nay khataa kee thee Sadiyon nay sazaa paayee (The ages of history have recorded times when for an error made in a few seconds centuries had to pay the price.)

His (Juggut Singh's) equation with authority was simple: he was on the other side. Personalities did not come into it. Subinspectors & policemen were people in khaki who frequently arrested him, always abused him, and sometimes beat him. Since they abused him and beat him without anger or hate, they were not human beings with names. They were only denominations one tried to get the better of. If one failed, it was just bad luck.

Jahaan mein ahle-eemaan soorat-e-khursheed jeetay hain, Idhar doobey, udhar nikley; udhar doobey, idhar niklay. In this world men of faith and self-confidence are    like the sun, They go down on one side to come up on the other.

But for many long days and nights I pondered over the words in the Mahabharata: ‘As two pieces of wood floating on the ocean come together at one time and are again separated, even such is the union of living creatures in this world.

Not forever does the bulbul sing In balmy shades of bowers, Not forever lasts the spring Nor ever blossom flowers. Not forever reigneth joy, Sets the sun on days of bliss, Friendships not forever last, They know not life, who know not this.

To plant your idea in someone’s head. To plant someone’s money in your own pocket. He who succeeds in the former, we call teacher. He who succeeds with the latter, we call boss. The one who succeeds in both, we call wife. The one who fails in both, we call husband.

What do the Gandhi-caps in Delhi know about the Punjab? What is happening on the other side in Pakistan does not matter to them. They have not lost their homes and belongings; they haven’t had their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters raped and murdered in the streets.

I believe I did succeed in making Indian uslims look upon me as a friend: when I was nominated to be a member of the Rajya Sabha many said, "We have another Muslim in Parliament." Others who disliked my views called me an unpaid agent of Pakistan. I treated both views as compliments.

The prose-poems of the Japji envelop us by opening our third eye to the experience of concrete manifestations of nature, the overall circle of light, which shone in the nimbus, which people saw around Nanak’s face, lit up by the shimmering glow of the flame which burnt inside him. It

As I had studied the poetry of Rumi, Jami, Nizami, Hafiz and Amir Khusrau, with some difficulty in the original Persian, and with some ease in various English translations, I realised that Nanak had absorbed the ethos of Islamic poetical mysticism, inherited the belief in ecstasy of union of Baba Farid, Nizam-ud-Din Aulia and Kabir. Of

He told us of an incident from the life of the Prophet Musa. Musa heard a poor shepherd praying: ‘Where art Thou that I may serve Thee? I will mend Thy boots, comb Thy hair, give Thee milk from my goats.’ Musa reprimanded the shepherd for so speaking to God. God in His turn reprimanded Musa. ‘Thou hast driven away one of my true servants.

A representative from India at the UN Assembly began his address thus: ‘Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named. When Rishi Kashyap struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, “What a good opportunity to have a bath.” He took off his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Pakistani had stolen them.’ The Pakistani representative jumped up furiously and shouted, ‘What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren’t there then.’ The Indian smiled and said, ‘And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech saying that Kashmir has been an integral part of India all along.

Consciousness of the bad is an essential prerequisite to the promotion of the good. It is no use trying to build a second storey on a house whose walls are rotten. It is best to demolish it. It is both cowardly and foolhardy to kowtow to social standards when one believes neither in the society nor in its standards. Their courage is your cowardice, their cowardice your courage. It is all a matter of nomenclature. One could say it needs courage to be a coward. A conundrum, but a quotable one. Make a note of it. And

There was another matter which caused much disturbance in our mind: the viciousness of sibling rivalry. We knew that kingship knows no kinship. No bridge of affection spans the abyss that separates a monarch from his sons; no bonds of affection exist between the sons of kings. Sired though they may have been by the same loins, lain in succession in the same womb and suckled the same breasts, no sooner were they old enough to know the world than they understood that they must destroy their siblings or be destroyed themselves.

In her novel In Times of Siege, Githa Hariharan quotes a German Pastor, Reverend Martin Niemöller, who was persecuted by the Nazis: ‘In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. ‘Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. ‘Then they came for the homosexuals, and I did not speak up because I was not a homosexual. ‘Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up because I was Protestant. ‘Then they came for me . . . but by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Mohammad, a child of Arab parents was enrolled in a school in New York. On the first day, his teacher asked, ‘What is your name?’ The boy replied, ‘Mohammad’. ‘From now on your name is Harry as you are in America,’ she said. In the evening, when he came back, his mother asked, ‘How was your day Mohammad?’ He said, ‘My name is not Mohammad. I’m in America and my name is Harry.’ His mother slapped him and said angrily: ‘Aren’t you ashamed of trying to dishonour your parents, your heritage, your religion?’ Then she called his father and he also slapped him. The next day when the teacher saw him with his face red and asked what happened, Mohammad said, ‘Madam, four hours after I became American, I was attacked by two Arabs.

Indians abroad tend to stick together. They join Indian clubs, regularly visit mosques, temples and gurdwaras and eat Indian food at home or in Indian restaurants. Very rarely do they mix with the English on the same terms as they do with their own countrymen. This kind of island-ghetto existence feeds on stereotypes - the English are very reserved; they do not invite outsiders to their homes because they regard their homes as their castles; English women are frigid, etc. I discovered that none of this was true. In the years that followed, I made closer friends with English men and women than I did with Indians. I lived in dozens of English homes and shared their family problems. And I discovered to my delight that nothing was further from the truth that the canard that English women are frigid.

We can see the process of deification taking place in the Indians’ perception of Mahatma Gandhi. Here we had as great a man as any the world has seen, but also full of human frailties. Not one of his four sons got on with him; one even embraced Islam to spite him. He was vain, took offence at the slightest remark against him, and a fad-ist who made nubile girls lie naked next to him to make sure that he had overcome his libidinous desires. All these failings which make him human and down to earth and yet hold him up as a shining example of a human being for all of mankind are being lost thanks to our putting him on a pedestal and worshipping him. It is time we learnt to give avatars and prophets their proper places as important historical personalities who did good to humanity. No more than that.

...Secularism has two meanings: the Western concept makes a clear distinction between functions of the State which includes politics and functions of religion which are confined to places of worship, public or private. This is the concept that Nehru accepted, preached and practiced. The other concept was equal respect for all religions. This was propagated and observed by men like Bapu Gandhi and Maulana Azad and lasted as long as the two men were alive. After that it deteriorated to a mere display of religiosity. If you were a devout Hindu you went to a Muslim dargah or threw an Iftar party to prove you were secular. If you were Muslim, you celebrated Diwali with your Hindu friends. Secularism was reduced to a sham display. Time has shown that as far as secularism is concerned, Nehru was right; Gandhi and Azad were wrong.

O Sage ! the stomach is the prison house of wind, The sagacious contain it not in captivity, If wind torment thy belly, release it, fart; For the wind in the stomach is like a stone on the heart.

We had heard that the people of Delhi loved their city as bees love flowers. But we could not believe that the child of a courtesan would prefer to live in a Delhi brothel rather than in our palace in Iran!