Notable Quotes about Indian Indepence Day
August 12, 2009 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized
I wanted to know the best of the life of one (Muhammad) who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.
Mahatma Gandhi Young India (September 23, 1924)
“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new…India discovers herself again.”
Jawaharlal Nehru (on Indian Independence Day, 1947)
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action–
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore
So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.
Mark Twain
“Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood… will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.”
Indira Gandhi
“We have believed – and we do believe now – that freedom is indivisible, that peace is indivisible, that economic prosperity is indivisible”
Indira Gandhi
Dr Ram K. Iyengar on Wed, 25th Nov 2009 10:17 am
I am proud of Bharat which has shown to the world how democracy has provided better opportunities for its citizens compared with the dictatorships and autocratic rulers in other “under developed” countries. Having lived in Maharashtra during the early years independence, we often admired the progress in the Soviet Union and sometimes opined that a militaristic dictator like Subhash Chandra Bose may have made Bharat more powerful compared to the democratic dictatorship of Pandit Nehru. During those young days of democracy, we admired Stalin and Mao-Tse-Tung (Mao Zedong) and hoped one day we will also have a disciplined dictatorship. We were teenagers then!
Much water has flown into Ganga since that time!
Despite Nehru’s reluctance to yield power to more dynamic Bharatiyas, despite Indira Gandhi’s short lived dictatorship, and despite the dynastic rule of Rajiv Gandhi, the PEOPLE of independent democratic India ultimately, through their aspiration and hard work, made Bharat a more desirable place than the unfortunate parts on the east and the west of Bharat that were carved out (VIVISECTION) by the self serving British rulers.
India has shown that democracy can work, albeit with patience and perseverance. That there can be social progress with economic development. That private capitalism can work with state capitalism to give a reasonable GDP growth rate.
To spread democracy to other parts of the world, the USA need not adopt the Bush doctrine of invasion and wars!
There is a non-violent and more peaceful way as shown by India.
We the US Americans of South Asian origin can influence the present and future role of the USA.
Yes the USA can lead a better way to bring about democracies and real freedom for the people in Middle East, and Africa. We need to elect representatives in the Congress who believe in patience, perseverance and hard work instead of senators and representatives who shoot from the hip all the time and who are not the coat-tails of past rulers who keep on pestering the present administration to increase the troops in Afghanistan.
We can send such a person to the US Senate on December 8 2009.
Would you consider Alan Khazei to be one such person?
Dr. Ram K. Iyengar,
Littleton MA
ramkiyengar@hotmail.com