Bipan Chandra > Quotes

“There was a greater truth — that of a glorious struggle, hard-fought and hard-won, in which many fell martyrs and countless others made sacrifices, dreaming of the day India would be free. That day had come. The people of India saw that too, and on 15 August — despite the sorrow in their hearts for the division of their land danced in the streets with abandon and joy.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“Perhaps the attitude for us to take towards our many failures is the one adopted by Gopal Krishna Gokhale towards those of the Moderate nationalists: Let us not forget that we are at a stage of the country’s progress when our achievements are bound to be small, and our disappointments frequent and trying. That is the place which it has pleased Providence to assign to us in this struggle, and our responsibility is ended when we have done the work which belongs to that place. It will, no doubt, be given to our countrymen of future generations to serve India by their successes; we, of the present generation, must be content to serve her mainly by our failures. For, hard though it be, out of those failures the strength will come which in the end will accomplish great tasks.9”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence

“Bhagat Singh revered Lajpat Rai as a leader. But he would not spare even Lajpat Rai, when, during the last years of his life, Lajpat Rai turned to communal politics. He then launched a political-ideological campaign against him. Because Lajpat Rai was a respected leader, he would not publicly use harsh words of criticism against him. And so he printed as a pamphlet Robert Browning’s famous poem, ‘The Lost Leader,’ in which Browning criticizes Wordsworth for turning against liberty. The poem begins with the line ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us.’ A few more of the poem’s lines were:
‘We shall march prospering, not thro’ his presence;
Songs may inspirit us, not from his lyre,’ and
‘Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more.’

There was not one word of criticism of Lajpat Rai. Only, on the front cover, he printed Lajpat Rai’s photograph!”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“One should not mistake gentleness and civility of character for weakness. They criticise me for my weakness, but this is too large a country with too many legitimate diversities to permit any so-called “strong man” to trample over people and their ideas.’14”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence

“The deceiver loses when there is correct response from the deceived...”
― Bipan Chandra

“nationalist or anti-imperialist struggle is a struggle about colonialism before it becomes a struggle against colonialism.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“Friendly relations between the Hindus and Muslims were a very healthy feature of life in eighteenth-century India.”
― Bipan Chandra, History of Modern India

“Indira Gandhi was to put it pithily in August 1972 when asked to list India’s achievements since 1947: ‘I would say our greatest achievement is to have survived as a free and democratic nation.’4”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence

“Holding that religious tenets were not immutable, Syed Ahmed Khan emphasized the role of religion in the progress of society: if religion did not keep pace with and meet the demands of the time it would get fossilized as in the case of Islam in India.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“Kings are made for the people, not peoples for their Kings.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“would go to the length of giving the whole Congress organization a decent burial, rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant,”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“John Lawrence rightly remarked that ‘had a single leader of ability arisen among them (the rebels) we must have been lost beyond redemption.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“In particular, secular, democratic elements must distinguish between religion as philosophy, spiritual experience, guide to morality and psychological solace and religion as dogma, bigotry and a vehicle for communalism.”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence

“The Indian national movement is also an example of how the constitutional space offered by the existing structure could be used without getting co-opted by it. It did not completely reject this space, as such rejection in democratic societies entails heavy costs in terms of hegemonic influence and often leads to isolation — but entered it and used it effectively in combination with non-constitutional struggle to overthrow the existing structure.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“A conversation between Gandhiji and Narayana Guru is significant. Gandhiji, in an obvious reference to Chaturvarna and the inherent differences in quality between man and man, observed that all leaves of the same tree are not identical in shape and texture. To this Narayana Guru pointed out that the difference is only superficial, but not in essence: the juice of all leaves of a particular tree would be the same in content.8”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“While persisting poverty has been the most important failure in India’s post-independence development, the survival of the democratic structure has been its grandest success.”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence

“since practices based on faith cannot be challenged without bringing faith itself into question. Hence, Raja Rammohan Roy, demonstrated that sati had no religious sanction, Vidyasagar did not ‘take up his pen in defence of widow marriage’ without being convinced about scriptural support and Dayanand based his anti-casteism on Vedic authority.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“Regarding the role of the nationalist Press, Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy, wrote as early as March 1886: ‘Day after day, hundreds of sharp-witted babus pour forth their indignation against their English oppressors in very pungent and effective diatribe.’And again in May: ‘In this way there can be no doubt there is generated in the minds of those who read these papers . . . a sincere conviction that we are all of us the enemies of mankind in general and of India in particular.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“A legacy, especially of a prolonged movement, tends to endure for a long time. But no legacy, however strong and sound, can last forever. It tends to erode and become irrelevant unless it is constantly reinforced and developed and sometimes transcended in a creative manner to suit the changing circumstances.”
― Bipan Chandra, India After Independence: 1947-2000

“What W.H. Morris-Jones wrote in 1966 is equally valid today: ‘The combination of political stability with establishment of a free, and freely moving, political system is what we entitled to call India’s political miracle.’5”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence

“The Trustee by the very term used means that he is not the owner. The owner is one whose interest he is called upon to protect,’ i.e., the worker.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“All people, high or low, respected one another’s religion and a spirit of tolerance, even harmony, prevailed.”
― Bipan Chandra, History of Modern India

“The unity and stability of the empire had been shaken up during the long and strong reign of Aurangzeb;”
― Bipan Chandra, History of Modern India

“From the beginning, the Congress was organized in the form of a Parliament. In fact, the word Congress was borrowed from North American history to connote an assembly of the people.”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“The power of the people in a democracy is the ‘liberating deluge’ that can, and we are sure will, sweep away the accumulated dirt of the ages. This is, of course, all the more reason for the preservation and deepening of democracy in India.”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence

“There is no alternative to the permanent continuation of struggle”
― Bipin Chandra, India Struggle for Independence

“If today we fail, tomorrow we will try and if tomorrow we fail, we will try again.’14”
― Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence

“On Aurangzeb’s death his three sons fought among themselves for the throne. The 65-year-old Bahadur Shah emerged victorious. He was learned, dignified, and able. He followed a policy of compromise and conciliation, and there was evidence of the reversal of some of the narrow-minded policies and measures adopted by Aurangzeb. He adopted a more tolerant attitude towards the Hindu chiefs and rajas.”
― Bipan Chandra, History of Modern India

“since 1989, all-India elections have been fought over such non-issues as the Bofors and hawala scandals, the reconstruction of a non-existing temple, reservations of a few thousand jobs in government service, the merits of a Vajpayee over a foreign-born Sonia Gandhi, or victory over a few hundred intruders in Kargil.”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence

“For example, the elective principle was first introduced by the British in the Indian Councils Act of 1892. The Congress and its nationalist precursors, and the Indian Press, had been demanding elections to the councils, elected majorities in them, and greater powers to the non-official members of councils for many years before that. Nationalist demands had already far exceeded what was granted in 1892.”
― Bipan Chandra, India Since Independence