10 Shashi Tharoor Quotes on History

Shashi Tharoor quotes on history

1. 'India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.' [1]

7. 'No Indian nationalist leader ever needed to say: We have created India; now all we need to do is to create Indians.' [7]

9. 'The memories of the first Independence Day may have faded, but the power of that magical moment must never be forgotten.' [8]

12. 'Our founding fathers wrote a constitution for a dream. We have given passports to their ideals.' [11]

20. 'This is my story of the India I know, with its biases, selections, omissions, distortions, all mine.... Every Indian must for ever carry with him, in his head and heart, his own history of India.' [16]

21. 'India has been born and reborn scores of times, and it will be reborn again. India is for ever, and India is forever being made.' [16]

24. 'The British had the gall to call Robert Clive 'Clive of India' as if he belonged to the country, when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged to him.' [16]

32. 'The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans.' [16]

34. 'The vehicles of human politics seem to run off course, but the site of the accident turns out to have been the intended destination.' [16]

36. 'Of course, we meet to mourn that part of our human family that is missing -- to remember the individuals and tell each other their stories. But we also meet to unearth the lessons we can draw from their lives and their fates.': Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General, at the UN's Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, 29 January 2007.