Source: 1910s, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (1916), p. 70
Context: Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa at this moment solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight. Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, an on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated. Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor...... The civilization of Europe, American and Australia exists today at all only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization because of victories through the centuries from Charles Martel in the eighth century and those of John Sobieski in the seventeenth century. During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish king, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents; and today, nobody can find in them any "social values" whatever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influences are concerned. There are such "social values" today in Europe, America and Australia only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do — that is, to beat back the Moslem invader.
“I personally believe that India has much to learn from the Western culture but, I am afraid, very little from Western Christianity…. Wherever Christianity went, it carried fire and sword… The natives lost their body as well as their souls. Now most of these countries have regained their political freedom but they have not recovered their souls.”
Meditations. Yogas, Gods, Religions (2000)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Ram Swarup 64
Indian historian 1920–1998Related quotes
Source: " Former BBC-India Chief Highlights Multiple Paths to God http://hafsite.org/media/pr/former-bbc-india-chief-highlights-multiple-paths-god", hafsite.org, Hindu American Foundation (HAF), 19 October 2010
[2008, July, God Is Not Dead Yet, Christianity Today, 52, 7, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html?start=5]
“In Western thought, the body holds the soul; in Indian thought, the soul holds the body.”
On Hinduism (2000)
"Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite," The National Interest (November 2002), p. 16
Young India (13 July 1924), reprinted in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 24, New Delhi, 1967, p. 476.
1920s
On his wife, as quoted in "There is an unconscious militant dislike of the Christian world towards Hindu India" http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/feb/12rajeev.htm, Rediff (12 February 1999)