On Ayodhya

There must be a complete recognition of the historical responsibility on both sides. They must not try to avoid it. All Hindu historians are liars. From 1907 onwards we became aware of the Hindu-Muslim problem as regards the nationalist movement. From that day till 1946 every fellow Bengali I have asked and every other Indian too had only one standard argument : The Hindu-Muslim problem does not exist. It has been created by the British.

My point is that it is the very nature of things. That what happened in Ayodhya should not have happened is another matter. But I say that the Muslims do not have the slightest right to complain about the desecration of one mosque. From 1000 A.D. every Hindu temple from Kathiawar to Bihar, from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas has been sacked and ruined. Not one temple was left standing all over northern India.

Temples escaped destruction only where Muslim Power did not gain access to them for reasons such as dense forests. Otherwise it was a continuous spell of vandalism. No nation with any self-respect will forgive this. They took over our women. And they imposed the Zaziya, the tax. Hindu view of life and the Muslim view of life are completely oriented towards a clash. The Muslims were the first to invent the theory of permanent revolution. The communists took over from them. No Muslims can live under the political domination of non-Muslims. Secondly, Muslims divide the world into two : regions of peace and regions of conflict. It is the duty of every Muslim to bring the latter within the fold of Islam. The Arab equivalent of the caliph is "Commander of the Faithful". And his obligation is jihad (holy war). Where do you think the word mujahedin comes from? Mu in Arabic means 'to be with'. Mujahid is to be with the jihad and Mujahedin is its plural. Why, I ask the English people, do you call them fundamentalists in Kabul and nowhere in England? The reason is that the English people have become completely ignorant. What is more, like us, they cannot face reality. (Times of India, 8.8.1993)

On Hinduism

There are two things. What Hindus are in practice and what Hindus consider themselves in theory. The practice is a completely different thing. It denies the world. In ancient India you will never find in the whole of Sanskrit literature any idea of denying the world. Christianity denies the world. Hinduism never denies the world. I love the world. I love it in its sensuous aspects. This I have got from Sanskrit literature - that is to say a kind of cultural life which is pre-occupied with the world but the world sublimated and refined by civilised feeling. Hindus developed this to perfection. They arrived more or less at a view of the cosmos which almost agrees, as a pure doctrine, with what is described in modern physics. I have always held any overview of life, held in contradiction to the truths established by modern physics untrue. By intuition the Hindus arrived at something of a conception of reality which is very close to the modern physicist's conception.

In the whole of Sanskrit literature there is no reference, not one word about the rigmarole. They are very concrete sensuous people concerned with life as lived, with human affection, in human sensuality, they redefined this. But Hinduism I have written a book, do you know what sub-title I have given to it, 'A religion to live by' not 'to go to heaven by'.