Sanjeev Sanyal > Quotes

“Geography is not just about the physical terrain, but also about the meaning that we attribute to it. Thus, the Saraswati flows, invisibly, at Allahabad.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“We know about the remarkable tale of how a foreign prince was invited to rule over a kingdom in southern India because Nandi Varman II himself tells us the story in inscriptions and bas-relief panels on the walls of the Vaikuntha Perumal temple in Kanchipuram.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“(a preliminary study hints that Varanasi may be as old as the Harappan cities).24”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“Thus, an Indian father’s determination to protect his beloved daughter led to the demise of the Portuguese in Oman. In”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“the ancient Persians also talk of an original ‘Aryan’ homeland and even name the river Helmand in Afghanistan after the Saraswati (i.e. Harahvaiti).”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“In reality, the network of large and small temples had a close relationship with merchant and artisan communities as well as the village/town councils; this is quite clear from an examination of various donations and contracts. Moreover, the reason that the temples accumulated so much wealth is that they acted as bankers”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“The first thing that should be clear from the outset is that there are no ‘pure’ races.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Roman writer Pliny (23–79 AD) wrote: ‘Not a year passed in which India did not take fifty million sesterces away from Rome.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Indian goods and merchants so dominated the trade that the Arabs spoke of Basra as ‘belonging to al-Hind’.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“As you light up the Heavens and the Earth, O Radiant Sun, So light up my Mind’.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Around 65–70,000 years ago, a very small number, perhaps a single band, crossed over from Africa into the southern Arabian peninsula. 11 It is amazing that despite all their superficial differences, all non-Africans are descendants of this tiny group of wanderers.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Like India, China turned inward and slipped into centuries of decline. Technological superiority could not save China from the closing of the mind. For a while, it seemed that the Indian Ocean would revert to the Arabs but that was not to be.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“A particularly intriguing case is that of an eleven-year-old girl, Meera, who was kidnapped from India’s west coast and then sold to the Spanish in Manila. She was then taken to Mexico where she is remembered as Catarina de San Juan.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“In contrast, Indian Hindus imposed on themselves caste rules that discouraged the crossing of the seas. Why did a people with such a strong maritime tradition impose these restrictions on themselves? Was it a loss of civilizational self-confidence? I have long looked for a satisfactory answer but have not yet found one. Nonetheless,”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“Mark Twain is said to have remarked, ‘History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“Ghalib’s poetry may be very good from a literary perspective but it is mostly a lament for a world that was collapsing around him. It contains no vision of the future. In”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“The great number of the inhabitants of that place were Brahmans … and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there; and when all these books came under the observation of the Mussalmans they summoned a number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of these books; but the whole of the Hindus had been killed … 13”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“The foundations built by Akbar and those after him were still strong but Aurangzeb committed the ultimate sin—he stayed on the throne too long. He was ninety by the time he died in 1707! Just as it happened with Ashoka and Feroze Shah Tughlaq”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Incredible History of India's Geography

“Numerous sites have been found outside the core area, including some as far east as Uttar Pradesh and as far west as Sutkagen-dor on the Makran coast of Baluchistan, not far from Iran. There is even a site in Central Asia called Shortughai along the Amu Darya, close to the Afghan-Tajik border. Thus, the geographical spread, the number of sites and implied population of the Harappan civilization dwarfs that of contemporary Egypt, China or Mesopotamia. What the Harappans lack in grand buildings, they make up for in the sheer scale of their civilizational reach and in the extraordinary municipal sophistication of their cities.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Interestingly, the lion plays an important role in the Mahavamsa, a Pali epic, that is the foundation myth of the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka. According to the Mahavamsa, the Sinhalese people are the descendants of Prince Vijaya and his followers who sailed down to Sri Lanka in the sixth century BC from what is now Orissa and West Bengal. The story tells us that Prince Vijaya was the son of a lion and a human princess, which is why the majority population of Sri Lanka call themselves the Sinhala—or the lion people—and the country’s national flag features a stylized lion holding a sword. Equally significant is the fact that the Tamil rebels of northern Sri Lanka chose to call themselves the ‘Tigers’. The ancient rivalry between the two big cats remains embedded in cultural memory even as the animals themselves face extinction.

Excerpt From: Sanjeev Sanyal. “Land of the Seven Rivers A Brief History of India's Geography”. Apple Books.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography

“The Dutch today take great pride in their liberal traditions but the history of their occupation of Indonesia tells a different story.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“Like many other students in the city, Chandrashekhar also participated in a number of protests during the Non-Cooperation Movement and was arrested. When produced before the magistrate, he was asked his name and replied ‘Azad’, meaning ‘free’. This is how he ended up with this moniker.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom

“In 1950, Prime Minister Nehru invited Le Corbusier, a French architect, to design the new city of Chandigarh. Although the new city was to be built at the heart of the ancient Sapta-Sindhu and very close to the Saraswati-Ghaggar, Nehru told Corbusier to create a city that was ‘unfettered’ by India’s ancient civilization. That is, the Prime Minister did not want the city to have any links with the past.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Incredible History of India's Geography

“When Americans raise their flag at the 9/11 sites, they reaffirm the resilience of their nation state. When Indians dance at the site of the 26/11 massacre, they celebrate the triumph of their civilization. The”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“The fleet swung so far west that they landed on the Brazil coast and claimed it for Portugal. Note that only a small part of Brazil actually fell within the Portuguese sphere”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“The opium was then sold to the Chinese in exchange for goods that were sold back in Europe. It solved the EIC’s silver problem but destroyed the Indian economy. Cheap textiles made on an industrial scale by British mills devastated the old artisan-made textile industry.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

“It is obvious that this ratio was considered special for a very long time. So when the seventeenth-century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb wanted to praise his vassal Maharaja Jai Singh, he called him ‘Sawai’ (meaning that he was worth a quarter more than any other man).”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“The geography of the Ramayana is oriented along a North–South axis while the Mahabharata is generally oriented on an East–West axis. This is not a total coincidence for they are aligned to two major trade routes. ”

Excerpt From: Sanjeev Sanyal. “Land of the Seven Rivers A Brief History of India's Geography”. Apple Books.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography

“Some of the foreign writers and thinkers who have influenced me include Friedrich Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter, Daniel Kahneman, Lee Kuan Yew, Nassim Taleb, Karl Popper, Charles Darwin, Sun Tzu, Vidiadhar Naipaul and Jane Jacobs, to name a few.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, India in the Age of Ideas: Select Writings: 2006-2018

“Nonetheless, it is clear that the Rig Veda belongs to the Bronze Age as it does not mention iron.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography