Passage To India Important Quotes

The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her.

How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.

I am out here to work, mind, to hold this wretched country by force. I'm not a missionary or a Labour Member or a vague sentimental sympathetic literary man. I'm just a servant of the Government; it's the profession you wanted me to choose myself, and that's that. We're not pleasant in India, and we don't intend to be pleasant. We've something more important to do.

The UPA government, instead of implementing the Supreme Court order—which would have been the defining indicator of its bona fides in retrieving the black money looted from the people of India— instead demanded a recall of the order. This establishes its complete mala fide, connivance and conspiracy, and confirms that it has no intention of taking any substantive steps to recover the black money stashed away abroad, or take any serious action to combat this grievous economic crime impoverishing our nation—the 21st century version of UPA imperialism. The nation should be informed that no investigation has taken place regarding the issues before it since the Supreme Court judgement, but the finance minister chose to conceal these extremely pertinent facts in his Paper. The White Paper coyly discussed the dimensions of black money stashed away abroad by quoting statistics that are more than a decade old, saying that these are being researched upon by three agencies whose report is expected in September 2012. From this it would appear that the government had no knowledge of the quantum of black money lying abroad. One wonders why the government presented the paper at this stage. Interestingly, the Paper officially disclosed a figure regarding Indian accounts held with Swiss banks, at around only US $213 billion (as against $88 billion projected by the International Monetary Fund, and $213.2 billion by GFI), down 60% between 2006 and 2010. A reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that black money holders, in anticipation of international and national public pressure (not governmental) transferred their money to other safe havens, the safest, it is said, being India. The last two years have seen several enabling statutes and mechanisms to stealthily repatriate the ill-gotten wealth back to India. I am also given to understand that there is evidence of a huge disparity between export figures, particularly of metals quoted by the government, and actual exports through data available from independent sources. The same applies to figures regarding FIIs. The game is clear. Use every government tool and instrument available to repatriate the money to India, without disclosure, culpability or punishment. There must be ways, and ways that we can never fathom or document, but the black money holders control legislation, either through being important politicians, or big businesses, who can buy safe passage, necessary loopholes and escape routes through statute or legislation. The finance minister through his negligence and active cooperation with the criminals allowed the stolen money to be removed from the accounts in which it was held and only a small fraction now remains, which too he is determined to place beyond the reach of the people of India who are its legitimate owners.

If heaven is the Lord's, the earth is the inheritance of man and consequently any honest traveller has the right to walk as he chooses, all over that globe which is his. What I heard was the thousand-year-old echo of thoughts which are re-thought over and over again in the East and which, nowadays, appear to have fixed their stronghold in the majestic heights of Thibet. I am one of the Genghis Khan race who, by mistake, and perhaps for her sins, was born in the Occident. So I was once told by a lama. I saw a wolf passing near us. It trotted by with the busy, yet calm gait of a serious gentleman going to attend to some affair of importance. The true Blissful Paradise which, being nowhere and everywhere, lies in the mind of each one of us. How happy I was to be there. en route for the mystery of these unexplored heights, alone in the great silence, "tasting the sweets of solitude and tranquility", as a passage of the Buddhist Scripture has it. Human credulity, be it in the East or in the West, has no limits. In India, the Brahmins have for centuries kept their countrymen to the opinion that offering presents to those belonging to their caste and feeding them, was a highly meritorious religious work. As a rule, the place where grain is ground is the cleanest in a Thibetan house. Asiatics do not feel, as we do, the need of privacy and silence in sleep.

The Complete Incarnation Krishna is utterly incomparable, he is so unique. Firstly, his uniqueness lies in the fact that although Krishna happened in the ancient past he belongs to the future, is really of the future. Man has yet to grow to that height where he can be a contemporary of Krishna's. He is still beyond man's understanding; he continues to puzzle and battle us. Only in some future time will we be able to understand him and appreciate his virtues. And there are good reasons for it. The most important reason is that Krishna is the sole great man in our whole history who reached the absolute height and depth of religion, and yet he is not at all serious and sad, not in tears. By and large, the chief characteristic of a religious person has been that he is somber, serious and sad-looking - like one vanquished in the battle of life, like a renegade from life. In the long line of such sages it is Krishna alone who comes dancing, singing and laughing. Religions of the past were all life-denying and masochistic, extolling sorrow and suffering as great virtues. If you set aside Krishna's vision of religion, then every religion of the past presented a sad and sorrowful face. A laughing religion, a religion that accepts life in its totality is yet to be born. Every religion, up to now, has divided life into two parts, and while they accept one part they deny the other, Krishna alone accepts the whole of life. Acceptance of life in its totality has attained full fruition in Krishna. That is why India held him to be a perfect incarnation of God, while all other incarnations were assessed as imperfect and incomplete. Krishna has a great future. After Freud the world of religion is not going to be the same as it was before him. Freud stands as a watershed between the religions of the past and the religion of the future. With Freud a great revolution has taken place and man's consciousness has achieved a breakthrough. We shall never be the same again after Freud. A new peak of consciousness has been touched and a new understanding, an altogether new perspective, a new vision of life has come into being. And it is essential to understand it rightly. With Freud a new kind of awareness has dawned on man: that suppression is wrong, that suppression brings with it nothing but self-pity and anguish. If a man fights with himself he can only ruin and destroy himself. If I make my left hand fight with my right hand, neither is going to win, but in the end the contest will certainly destroy me. While my two hands fight with themselves, I and I alone will be destroyed in the process. That is how, through denial and suppression of his natural instincts and emotions, man became suicidal and killed himself. Krishna alone seems to be relevant to the new awareness, to the new understanding that came to man in the wake of Freud and his findings. It is so because in the whole history of the old humanity Krishna alone is against repression. That is why Krishna has great significance for the future. And his significance will continue to grow with the passage of time. ...when the suppressive religions of the world have been consigned to the wastebasket of history, Krishna's flame will be heading towards its peak, moving towards the pinnacle of its brilliance. It will be so because, for the first time, man will be able to comprehend him, to understand him and to imbibe him. And it will be so because, for the first time, man will really deserve him and his blessings.