“Hindu tolerance, it seems, is another name for Hindu cowardice.”

— Girilal Jain

Source: quoted in Goel, S.R. Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990) Preface, 2nd edition, p. xvii

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Girilal Jain 18

Indian journalist 1924–1993

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Islam vis-a-vis Hindu temples. (1993)

“All the above names are Hindu, and ordinarily these …are Hindus by race, who had been carried off in infancy from various villages or the houses of different rebel Hindu princes. In spite of their Hindu names, they are however, Mahomedans.”

Niccolao Manucci (1638–1717) Italian writer and historian

Manucci elaborating about the women and eunuchs in the Mughal harems. Manucci, II, 336-38. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 12
Storia do Mogor

“I am a Hindu... I am proud of being a Hindu... and because of tolerance to all other religions, I consider Hinduism superior.”

Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007) Indian politician

(in a interview with him in Hindustan Times, 19/11/1990). Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.

“Buddhism is returning home to India after a long exile of a thousand years and, like the proverbial prodigal son, is being received with open arms. Religious tolerance of the average Hindu partly explains the warm reception. But a more important reason is the fact that Buddha and Buddhism form an intimate part of Hindu consciousness. Buddha was a Hindu. Buddhism is Hindu in its origin and development, in its art and architecture, iconography, language, beliefs, psychology, names, nomenclature, religious vows and spiritual discipline…. Hinduism is not all Buddhism, but Buddhism forms part of the ethos which is essentially Hindu”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Buddhism vis-a-vis Hinduism (1958, revised 1984)

“The institution of caste illustrates the spirit of comprehensive synthesis characteristic of the Hindu mind with its faith in the collaboration of races and the co-operation of cultures. Paradoxical as it may seem, the system of caste is the outcome of tolerance and trust.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

“The name " Hindustan " must continue to be the appellation of our country. Such other names as India, Hind, etc., being derived from the same original word Sindhu may be used but only to signify the same sense—die land of the Hindus, a country which is the abode of the Hindu Nation. Aryavarta, Bharat-Bhumi and such other names are of course the ancient and the most cherished epithets of our Mother Land and will continue to appeal to the cultured elite. In this insistence that the Mother Land of the Hindus must be called but " Hindustan ", no encroachment or humiliation is implied in connection with any of our non-Hindu countrymen. Our Parsee and Christian countrymen are already too akin to us culturally and are too patriotic and the Anglo-indians too sensible to refuse to fall in line with us Hindus on so legitimate a ground.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

V.D. Savarkar quoted from B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

“The early successes of Islam,” he writes, “were against religions which had lost their hold on the minds of the people. But in India the Hindu way of life, symbolised by high moral values of tolerance, truthfulness and justice was very much the part and parcel of the multitude’s mental and material being. These eternal and moral values of life which constitute the core of Hinduism were to sustain it in the next five centuries of Muslim and another two centuries of British rule. The conclusion, therefore, seems inescapable that much of the decline in social and moral values of Hindu society is the result and not the cause of their foreign subjugation.””

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

Ram Gopal, Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D., 1983, p. 9
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

“It was only in the nineteenth century that Western Indologists and Christian missionaries separated the Buddhists, the Jains, and the Sikhs from the Hindus who, in their turn, were defined as only those subscribing to Brahmanical sects…. Nowhere in the voluminous Muslim chronicles do we find the natives of this country known by a name other than Hindu. There were some Jews, and Christians, and Zoroastrians settled here and there… The chronicles distinguish these communities from the Muslims on the one hand, and from the natives of this country on the other. It is only when they come to the natives that no more distinctions are noticed; all natives are identified as ahl-i-Hunûd-Hindu!… In all their narratives, all natives are attacked as Hindus, massacred as Hindus, plundered as Hindus, converted forcibly as Hindus, captured and sold in slave markets as Hindus, and subjected to all sorts of malice and molestation as Hindus. The Muslims never came to know, nor cared to know, as to which temple housed what idol. For them all temples were Hindu but-khãnas, to be desecrated or destroyed as such. They never bothered to distinguish the idol of one God or Goddess from that of another. All idols were broken or burnt by them as so many buts, or deposited in the royal treasury if made of precious metals, or strewn at the door-steps of the mosques if fashion from inferior stuff. In like manner, all priests and monks, no matter to what school or order they belonged, were for the Muslims so many “wicked Brahmans” to be slaughtered or molested as such. In short, the word “Hindu” acquired a religious connotation for the first time within the frontiers of this country. The credit for this turn-out goes to the Muslim conquerors. With the coming of Islam to this country all schools and sects of Sanãtana Dharma acquired a common denominator - Hindu!… Once again, it goes to the credit of the Muslim conquerors that the word “Hindu” acquired a national connotation within the borders of this country.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

“But I felt that I wanted a book to be out there to counteract their claims and to tell the history of the Hindus the way I think it should be told, the way it is more to the credit to the Hindus. It's a very positive book-it shows how for so much of their history the Hindus have been so tolerant, and so open to different forms of religion, and that to close it down now would be a terrible shame. So it's really a backhanded compliment-Hinduism has always been so good, and these guys are ruining it.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

About her book [ The Hindus: An Alternative History].
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

“Hindu tolerance, it seems, is another name for Hindu cowardice.”

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Girilal Jain 18

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