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PRAYER

asato ma sadgamaya
tamaso ma jyotirgamaya
mrtyorma amrtam gamaya

Lead me from untruth to truth.
Lead me from darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality.
(Brhadaranyaka Upanishad — I.iii.28)

Quotes about Hinduism / Hindu

"In the whole world ... there is no study ... so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. They are products of the highest wisdom. They are destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people."
- Schopenhauer

If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word “fearlessness.”
-Swami Vivekananda

"We have to remember that the highest religion of the Upanishad, which insists on meditation and morality and worship of God in spirit and in truth, is not encumbered by such traditional dogmas and miracles as still hang upon the skirts of other religions. Its central principle that there is one supreme reality that manifests itself in the universe is not asserted as a dogma. It is the ultimate truth at which it is possible for human understanding to arrive. The progress of science and philosophy does not conflict with it but only confirms it."
- Dr S. Radhakrishnan

"Then and then alone you are a Hindu, when the distress of anyone bearing that name comes to your heart and makes you feel as if your own son were in distress. Then and then alone are you a Hindu, when you will be ready to bear everything for them..."
- Swami Vivekananda

We must come out courageously and acknowledge the truth that when people speak of the great past and great culture of our country it is in fact to the Hindu History, Hindu Culture and Hindu Civilization that they refer.
- Dr. R.C. Majumdar, Historian in 1960 at Calcutta

India was the mother, the source, of all the knowledge the West has acquired and of all the progress the West has acheived.
- Mark Twain

"After a study of some forty years and more of the great religions of the world, I find none so perfect, none so scientific, none so philosophical and none so spiritual than the great religion known by the name of Hinduism."-Annie Wood Besant

India is the motherland of our race, and sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages. She is the mother of our philosophies, of our mathematics, of our democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
- Pulitzer Prize winner Will Durant in 'Story of Civilisation'


Acceptance of the vedas, with reverence; recognition of the fact that the means or ways to salvation are diverse and the realization of the truth that the number of Gods to be worshipped is large, that indeed is the distinguishing feature of the Hindu religion.
- Bal Gangadhar Tilak ( 1995 Supreme Court decision)

‘We should be absolutely unsparing in our attack on whatever obstructs the growth of the nation, and never be afraid to call a spade a spade… We have strong things to say; let us say them strongly; we have stern things to do; let us do them sternly’
- Sri Aurobindo

All the tortures and miseries of the world will pass over without hurting us, and we shall come out of the flames like Prahlada, so long as we hold on to this grandest of all our inheritances, spirituality. If a Hindu is not spiritual, I do not call him a Hindu.
- Swami Vivekananda

A CHARACTERISTIC OF HINDUISM IS ITS RECEPTIVITY AND ALL COMPREHENSIVENESS. IT CLAIMS TO BE THE ONE RELIGION OF HUMANITY, OF HUMAN NATURE, OF THE ENTIRE WORLD. IT CARES NOT TO OPPOSE THE PROGRESS OF ANY OTHER SYSTEM. FOR IT HAS NO DIFFICULTY IN INCLUDING ALL OTHER RELIGIONS WITHIN ITS ALL EMBRACING ARMS AND EVERWIDIENING FOLD.

AND, IN REAL TRUTH, HINDUISM HAS SOMETHING TO OFFER WHICH IS SUITED TO ALL MIND. ITS VERY STRENGTH LIES IN ITS INFINITE ADAPTABILITY TO THE INFINITE DIVERSITY OF HUMAN CHARACTER AND HUMAN TENDENCIES. IT HAS ITS HIGHLY SPIRITUAL AND ABSTRACT SIDE SUITED TO THE METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHER, ITS PRACTICAL AND CONCRETE SIDE SUITED TO THE MAN OF POETIC FEELING AND IMAGINATION, ITS QUIESCENT AND CONTEMPLATIVE SIDE SUITED TO THE MAN OF PEACE AND LOVER OF SECLUSION.
- Sir Monier Williams (Boden Prof. of Sanskrit in Oxford).

" If you had the same positive feeling for your own religion, the true mother of our country, you could never bear to see any Hindu brother converted into a Christian. Nevertheless you see this occurring everyday, yet you are quite indifferent. Where is your faith? Where is your Patriotism? Everyday Christian missionaries abuse Hinduism to your faces, and yet how many are there amongst you who will stand up in its defence, whose blood boils with righteous indignation at the fact?

Forget not, -"One Hindu Brother going out of our fold is not just one Hindu less but it is one enemy more."
-Swami Vivekananda

With the Hindus you will find one national idea-spirituality. In no other religion, in no other sacred books of the world, will you find so much energy spent in defining the idea of God.
-Swami Vivekananda

"Many are the religions and many the races which are flourishing in India, but none of them stretches back into the far dawn of her past, nor is necessary for her endurance as a nation. Every one might pass away as they came, and India would still remain. Her history, her literature, her art, her monuments, all have Hinduism written across them."
"India lived before their coming; India could live after their passing. But let Hinduism go, Hinduism that was India's cradle, and in that passing would be India's grave. Then would India with India's religion be but a memory, as are Egypt and Egypt's religion now. India would remain then as a subject for the antiquariam, the archaeologist, a corpse for dissection, but no longer an object of patriotism, no longer a nation."
-Annie Besant (1847-1933) British Theosophist Who made India her home.

Vedanta (India) is the most sublime of all philosophies, and the most comforting of all religions. It has room for almost every religion; it embraces them all.
-Prof.Max Mueller

The inhuman treatment the invading Islamic hordes inflicted upon the Hindus in India for centuries has no parallel.
-Historian Arnold ToynBee

"I want nothing but Ganga water and the Philosophical texts that have raised India to its glory."
-Greek Philosopher Aristotle on being asked by Alexander the Great as to what he could bring from his campaign to conquer the world

Why a Hindu should be proud of himself

To my mind that is the argument why our religion is truer than any other religion, because it never conquered, because it never shed blood, because its mouth always shed on all words of blessing, of peace, words of love and sympathy. It is here and here alone that the ideals of toleration were first preached; and it is here and here alone that toleration and sympathy have become practical; it is theoretical in every country; it is here and here alone, that the Hindus build mosques for the Mohammedans and churches for the Christians.

The debt which the world owes to our Motherland is immense. Taking country with country, there is not one race on this earth to which the world owes so much as to the patient Hindu, the mild Hindu.

There is not a country possessing a good ethical code but has borrowed something of it from us, and there is not one religion possessing good ideas of the immortality of the soul but has derived it directly or indirectly from us.

The one characteristic of Indian thought is its silence, its calmness. At the same time the tremendous power that is behind it is never expressed by violence.

-Swami Vivekananda

My Country

Any one who thinks lowly of India that is Bharat, should read what Swami Vivekananda had to say about our country

AND WHAT A LAND! WHOSOEVER STANDS ON THIS SACRED LAND, WHETHER ALIEN OR A CHILD OF THE SOIL, FEEL HIMSELF SURROUNDED- UNLESS HIS SOUL IS DEGRADED TO THE LEVEL OF BRUTE ANIMALS- BY THE LIVING THOUGHTS OF THE EARTH'S BEST AND PUREST SONS, WHO HAVE BEEN WORKING TO RAISE THE ANIMAL TO THE DIVINE THROUGH CENTURIES, WHOSE BEGINNING HISTORY FAILS TO TRACE. THE VERY AIR IS FULL OF THE PULSATIONS OF SPIRITUALITY. THIS LAND IS SACRED TO PHILOSOPHY, TO ETHICS AND SPIRITUALITY, TO ALL THAT TENDS TO GIVE A RESPITE TO MAN IN HIS INCESSANT STRUGGLE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE ANIMAL, TO ALL TRAINING THAT MAKES MAN THROW OFF THE GARMENT OF BRUTALITY AND STAND REVEALED AS THE SPIRIT IMMORTAL, THE BIRTHLESS, THE DEATHLESS, THE EVER-BLESSED- THE LAND WHERE THE CUP OF PLEASURE WAS FULL, AND FULLER HAS BEEN THE CUP OF MISERY, UNTIL HERE, FIRST OF ALL, MAN FOUND OUT THAT IT WAS ALL VANITY; HERE, FIRST OF ALL IN THE PRIME OF YOUTH, IN THE LAP OF LUXURY, IN THE HEIGHT OF GLORY AND PLENITUDE OF POWER, HE BROKE THROUGH THE FETTERS OF DELUSION. HERE, IN THIS OCEAN OF HUMANITY, AMIDST THE SHARP INTERACTION OF STRONG CURRENTS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN, OF STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS, OF WEALTH AND POVERTY, OF JOY AND SORROW, OF SMILE AND TEAR, OF LIFE AND DEATH, IN THE MELTING RHYTHM OF ETERNAL PEACE AND CALMNESS, AROSE THE THRONE OF RENUNCIATION! HERE IN THIS LAND, THE GREAT PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DEATH, OF THE THIRST FOR LIFE, AND THE VAIN MAD STRUGGLES TO PRESERVE IT ONLY RESULTING IN THE ACCUMULATION OF WOES, WERE FIRST GRAPPLED WITH AND SOLVED- SOLVED AS THEY NEVER WERE BEFORE AND NEVER WILL BE HEREAFTER; FOR HERE AND HERE ALONE WAS DISCOVERED THAT EVEN LIFE ITSELF IS AN EVIL, THE SHADOW ONLY OF SOMETHING WHICH ALONE IS REAL. THIS IS THE LAND WHERE ALONE RELIGION WAS PRACTICAL AND REAL, AND HERE ALONE MEN AND WOMEN PLUNGED BOLDLY IN TO REALISE THE GOAL, JUST AS IN OTHER LANDS THEY MADLY PLUNGE IN TO REALISE THE PLEASURES OF LIFE BY ROBBING THEIR WEAKER BRETHREN. HERE AND HERE ALONE THE HUMAN HEART EXPANDED TILL IT INCLUDED NOT ONLY THE HUMAN, BUT BIRDS,BEASTS, AND PLANTS; FROM THE HIGHEST GODS TO GRAINS OF SAND, THE HIGHEST AND THE LOWEST, ALL FIND A PLACE IN THE HEART OF MAN, GROWN GREAT, INFINITE. AND HERE ALONE, THE HUMAN SOUL STUDIED THE UNIVERSE AS ONE UNBROKEN UNITY WHOSE EVERY PULSE WAS HIS OWN PULSE.