TimEs

“The great Cambridge historian F. W. Maitland liked to remind his students that ‘what is now in the past was once in the future’. There could be no better maxim for the historian, and especially the historian of the recent past, who addresses an audience with very decided views on the subjects about which he presumes to inform them. An American historian of the Vietnam War is read by those who have mostly made up their minds on whether the war was just or not.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“What subverts democracy, and what preserves it? In any democracy, the moral imagination is always in peril. Necessary and delicate, it can so easily be hijacked by fear, shame, and outraged masculinity. The real "class of civilizations" is not "out there," between admirable Westerners and Muslim zealots. It is here, within each person, as we oscillate uneasily between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others.”
― Martha Nussbaum

“Finally, no country has as much stake as India in having a prosperous and civilian democracy in Pakistan. Even though the Nawaz Sharif government was clearly corrupt in many ways, India’s interests are not well served by the undermining of civilian rule in Pakistan, to be replaced by activists and military leaders. Also, the encouragement of cross-border terrorism, which India accuses Pakistan of, is likely to be dampened rather than encouraged by Pakistan’s economic prosperity and civilian politics. It is particularly important in this context to point to the dangerousness of the argument, often heard in India, that the burden of public expenditure [of developing nuclear weapons] would be more unbearable for Pakistan, given its smaller size and relatively stagnant economy, than it is for India. This may well be the case, but the penalty that could visit India from an impoverished and desperate Pakistan, in the present situation of massive insecurity, could be quite catastrophic. Strengthening of Pakistan’s stability and enhancement of its well-being has prudential importance for India, in addition to its obvious ethnical significance. That central connection - between the moral and prudential - must be urgently grasped. [India’s ability to make bombs is still very costly for India with “it being estimated that the additional costs of providing elementary education for every child with neighbourhood schools at every location in the country would cost roughly the same amount of money (as making nukes)”.”
― Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

“Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin. I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine. Therefore, it hurts me deeply when the cry of rejection rings loud against the West in my country with the clamour that Western education can only injure us.”
― Rabindranath Tagore