“India is supposed to be a religious country above everything else, and Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and others take pride in their faiths and testify to their truth by breaking heads.”

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)
Context: India is supposed to be a religious country above everything else, and Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and others take pride in their faiths and testify to their truth by breaking heads. The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere has filled me with horror, and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seems to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition and exploitation, and the preservation of vested interests. And yet I knew well that there was something else in it, something which supplied a deep inner craving of human beings. How else could it have been the tremendous power it has been and brought peace and comfort to innumerable tortured souls? Was that peace merely the shelter of blind belief and absence of questioning, the calm that comes from being safe in harbour, protected from the storms of the open sea, or was it something more? In some cases certainly it was something more.
But organized religion, whatever its past may have been, today is largely an empty form devoid of real content. Mr. G. K. Chesterton has compared it (not his own particular brand of religion, but other!) to a fossil which is the form of an animal or organism from which all its own organic substance has entirely disappeared, but has kept its shape, because it has been filled up by some totally different substance. And, even where something of value still remains, it is enveloped by other and harmful contents. That seems to have happened in our Eastern religions as well as in the Western.<!-- p. 241

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "India is supposed to be a religious country above everything else, and Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and others take pride …" by Jawaharlal Nehru?
Jawaharlal Nehru photo
Jawaharlal Nehru 110
Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister … 1889–1964

Related quotes

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
R. Venkataraman photo

“Remember, under this Flag National Flag of India, there is no prince and there is no peasant, there is no rich no poor. There is no privilege; there is only duty and responsibility and sacrifice. Whether we be Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs or Zoroastrians and others, our Mother India has one undivided heart and on indivisible spirit. Men and women of reborn India, rise and salute this Flag!”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

In His speech to the nation on the day prior to the Republic Day (in 1989), p. 181-82
Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001

George W. Bush photo
Jawaharlal Nehru photo
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Lal Bahadur Shastri photo
David Silverman photo

“Atheists are the fastest-growing religious subgroup in all fifty states. There are more atheists in this country than there are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists combined and doubled.”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

2012-03-21
Unbelievable! Atheists to Rally in Record Numbers
Carol Pinchefsky
Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/03/21/unbelievable-atheists-to-rally-in-record-numbers/

Guru Arjan photo

Related topics