“Till now we Maharashtrians kept saying that Shivaji Utsav is only a historical commemoration and it has no political colour. But the festival that we have organized here in Nashik is both historical and political. Only those people, who have the capability to struggle for the freedom of their country just like Shivaji Maharaj, have the real right to organize and celebrate a festival commemorating his memory. Our main objective must therefore be to strive towards breaking the shackles of colonial rule. If our only aims are finding solace in foreign rule, earning fat salaries, be peaceful negotiators with the government on inconsequential issues such as lowering taxes, diluting some laws here and there, and secure ourselves enough to eat, lead comfortable lives, earn pensions and privileges—then this Utsav is not for you or for Shivaji, but that of the last Peshwa Baji Rao who capitulated to British might! Here we are invoking the god of revolution, Shivaji Maharaj, so that he may inspire and instil that energy in all of us. Depending on circumstances our means might change, but the end is non-negotiable and that end is total and complete freedom for our motherland.”

— Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

From a speech by V. D. Savarkar, quoted in Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 (2019)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Vinayak Damodar Savarkar 24

Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, … 1883–1966

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“The Historian of Shivaji at the end of a careful study of all the records about him in eight different languages, is bound to admit that Shivaji was not only the maker of the Maratha nation, but also the greatest constructive genius of medieval India. States fall, empires break up, dynasties become extinct, but the memory of a true “hero as King” like Shivaji remains an imperishable historical legacy for the entire human race. – The pillar of people’s hope. The center of a world’s desire, to animate the heart, to kindle the imagination, and to inspire the brain of succeeding ages to the highest endeavors.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Sir Jadunath Sarkar, House of Shivaji: Studies and Documents on Maratha History, Royal Period, 1955, p. 115

“Our claim is that a common political project is possible. This possibility of course will have to be verified and realized in practice. … We are capable of democracy. The challange is to organize it politically.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

226
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

“The proto-historic religious festivities”

Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg (1929) German ethnologe, sociologe, writer

Vom Schmetterling zur Doppelaxt, p. 22-23.
Vom Schmetterling zur Doppelaxt (1990)
Context: The proto-historic religious festivities [of the Maternal Megalith Culture] were strongly sexual in nature. They commonly culminated in what today is referred to as group sex and is socially regarded as extremely negative nowadays. In fact, the inherent potential of sexuality is to decrease social conflict, for indeed sexual activity not only gratifies, it pacifies as well. Our biological anthropological heritage disposes humanity to far more diverse varieties of sexual behaviours than our modern repressive culture permits or deems 'socially acceptable'. Abhorring them as unmentionable immoralities, white colonial masters often gladly took to using all the sexual customs of many autochtonous peoples as excuses to oppress and severely decimate the tribes in question, even doing so with a perfect peace of conscience. Islam's campaigners in the Orient, pioneers of Confucianism in China, and Caucasian Christians used their best endeavours to destroy root and branch of all surviving sexual rites they came across; that which had priorly been sacred practice became re-defined as sinful lewdness and perversion. These religious processes yielded widespread absence of such customs even in many primitive cultures by the modern period. Similar proto-historic customs [of the Maternal Megalith Culture] were wiped out in a comparable fashion [by Indo-Europeans], with structurally similar yet not identical reasonings given, for all patriarchal ethnics regard orgiastic indulgences as corruptive to their social fabric.

“My beliefs were that men and women alike have to be in this struggle together, and we cannot safeguard our country just with one wing. … Now our women are the leaders, not only political leaders, but also leaders that lead in every single front, and they are part of the main leaders of the revolution. And therefore, you can see that the rulers are afraid from women.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Democracy Now! interview (2011)

“The Communist Party of Chile has a historic opportunity today of having the political representation it deserves in congress. We are a party with a 100-year history, which has waged struggles through the perspective of workers, the pobladores and students. We have had and have earned a space in this country and our ideals also need to be reflected in the national congress.”

Karol Cariola (1987) Chilean politician

Cariola, Mujer, Matrona, Dirigente Social y Política: Abrir el Congreso Nacional a la Ciudadanía, DiarioDigital, 2013-08-24 http://www.diarioreddigital.cl/index.php/politica/36-politica/443-karol-cariola-mujer-matrona-dirigente-social-y-politica-abrir-el-congreso-nacional-a-la-ciudadania-,
Original: "El PC tiene hoy una oportunidad histórica de tener la representación política que nos corresponde en el congreso. Somos un partido con cien años de historia, que ha dado luchas desde la perspectiva de los trabajadores, los pobladores, los estudiantes. Hemos tenido y nos hemos ganado un espacio en este país y nuestras ideas tienen que verse reflejadas también en el congreso nacional".
Source: Pobladores is a term used in Chile to refer to working class people who reside in the most densely populated communes in Santiago, and non-metropolitan provinces, with the lowest household incomes and with very limited or no social mobility.

“But that great struggle was carried on by those whom this day is set apart to commemorate, not only for the preservation of the Union. The authority of the Federal Government had been resisted by armed force. They were also striving to restore peace. It must be remembered that our Republic was organized to avoid and discourage war, and to promote and establish peace. It is the leading characteristic of our national holidays that they are days of peace. The ways of our people are the ways of peace. They naturally seek ways to make peace more secure.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

“It has always been our deep conviction, and we have always stressed the fact that the only solution for Afghanistan is democracy through elections. Each individual must have the right to vote. The day we will be in Kabul, we will organize elections under the auspices of international organizations.”

Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953–2001) Afghan military leader

Meeting with European legislators http://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2000/june/jun23i2000.html (11 June 2000).

“To have peace and not war, the drift toward a war economy, as facilitated by the moves and the demands of the sophisticated conservatives, must be stopped; to have peace without slump, the tactics and policies of the practical right must be overcome. The political and economic power of both must be broken. The power of these giants of main drift is both economically and politically anchored; both unions and an independent labor party are needed to struggle effective.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

The New Men of Power (1948).
1940s

“Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, the United States now has become one of the foremost targets of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life. Some of our actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that we have historically condemned.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Pages 117-118
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

“The statement is made with certainty: a festival that does not get its life from worship, even though the connection in human consciousness be ever so small, is not to be found. To be sure, since the French Revolution, people have tried over and over to create artificial festivals without any connection with religious worship, or even against such worship, such as the "Brutus Festival" or "Labor Day," but they all demonstrate, through the forced and narrow character of their festivity, what religious worship provides to a festival. […] Clearer than the light of day is the difference between the living, rooted trees of genuine cultic festival and our artificial festivals that resemble those "maypoles," cut at the roots, and carted here and there, to be planted for some definite purpose. Of course we may have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we are only at the dawn of an age of artificial festivals. Were we [in Germany] prepared for the possibility that the official forces, and especially the bearers of political power, would artificially create the appearance of the festive with so huge an expense in external arrangements? And that this seductive, scarcely delectable appearance of artificial "holidays" would be so totally lacking in the essential quality, that true and ultimate harmony with the world? And that such holidays would in fact depend on the suppression of that harmony and derive their dangerous seduction from that very fact?”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

In the three rhetorical questions that end this quote, Pieper alludes to the Nazis' elaborately stage-managed "festivals", in particular the Nuremberg Rally, the subject of Leni Riefenstahl's classic propaganda documentary, Triumph of the Will.
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 51–52

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