The Age of Kali Quotes

“They destroyed all the equipment, all the medicines. The Harijans – the people we used to call Untouchables – used to come a hundred miles for treatment.’ ‘But I thought Untouchability was outlawed at independence,’ I said. ‘Technically it was,’ replied Tyagi. ‘But do you know the saying “Dilli door ast”? It means “Delhi is far away.” The laws they pass in the Lok Sabha [Indian parliament] make little difference in these villages. Out here it will take much more than a change in the law to alleviate the lot of the Dalits [the oppressed castes, i.e. the former Untouchables].’ ‘But I still don’t understand why the Rajputs did this. What difference does it make to them if you educate the Untouchables?’ ‘The lower castes have always been the slaves of the higher castes,’ replied Tyagi. ‘They work in their fields for low wages, they sweep their streets, clean their clothes. If we educate them, who will do these dirty jobs?’ Dr Tyagi waved his hands at me in sudden exasperation: ‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘The Rajputs hate this place because it frees their slaves.’ ‘And what did you do,’ I asked, ‘while the Rajputs were beating the place up?’ Dr Tyagi made a slight gesture with his open palm: ‘I was just sitting,’ he said. ‘What could I do? I was thinking of Gandhiji. He was also beaten up – many times. He said you must welcome such attacks because it is only through confrontation that you can go forward. An institution like ours needs such incidents if it is to regenerate itself. It highlights the injustice the Harijans are facing.’ He paused, and smiled. ‘You yourself would not have come here if this had not happened to us.’ ‘What will you do now?’ I asked. ‘We will start again. The poor of this desert still need us.’ ‘And if the higher castes come for you again?’ ‘Then we will welcome them. They are also victims of their culture.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Ten years ago every second person at Delhi drinks parties seemed to be either an old schoolfriend of the Prime Minister or a member of his cabinet. Now, quite suddenly, no one in Delhi knows anyone in power. A major democratic revolution has taken place almost unnoticed, leaving the urban Anglicised élite on the margins of the Indian political landscape.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“According to the Puranas, the Kali Yug is the last age before the world is destroyed by the ‘fire of one thousand suns’, after which the cycle reaches its conclusion and time momentarily stops, before the wheel turns again and a new cycle begins. Rather”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Yet anything less ecstatic than the singing of today’s widows in Vrindavan would be hard to imagine. At the back, the madwomen are shrieking. In the foreground, the exhausted old widows struggle to keep up with the cantor’s pitch, many nodding asleep until given a poke by one of the ashram managers walking up and down the aisles with a stick. It is difficult to think of a sorrier or more pathetic sight. Vrindavan, Krishna’s earthly paradise, is today a place of such profound sadness and distress that it almost defies description.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Not for nothing is he known here as Im the Dim,’ said Abida Hussein, a former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States and a candidate for Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League, which most people expected to win the election. ‘It’s a classic case of overdeveloped pectorals and underdeveloped brain cells.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Now, understand thees, young man,’ she said in an accent heavy with Southern European vowels. ‘When the Indians came to Goa in 1961 it was 100 per cent an invasion. From what were they supposed to be liberating us? Not the Portuguese, because the Portuguese never oppressed us. Let me tell you exactly what it was the Indians were freeing us from. They were kindly liberating us from peace and from security.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Mr William. At this stage you must please take off your shirt. If you wish to go in to the inner temple, you must be wearing only a pant or a lungi. This is our custom.’ ‘Why here?’ I asked. ‘Why not at the entrance?’ ‘Our goddess Parashakti reveals herself in different forms in different parts of the temple,’ explained Mr Venugopal. ‘At the top she is in her most gentle and wise and motherly form: there she shows herself as the goddess Saraswati and the goddess Lakshmi. But here in this lower compound she appears in her most terrible form. Here she is Kali. We must be most respectful. To anger her …’ He broke off, and ran his fingers melodramatically across his throat. ‘Finish,’ he said, arching his eyebrows for emphasis.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Meenakshi, then as now, is the city’s great fertility goddess, and the focus of her cult lies in her union with Sundareshvara. Every night in the temple the images of Meenakshi and Sundareshvara are brought together in the latter’s bedchamber. The last act of the priests before they close the doors is to remove Meenakshi’s nose-jewel, lest the rubbing of it irritate her husband when they make love – an act, so the priests will tell you, that ensures the preservation and regeneration of the universe.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Moreover, the spread of cable and satellite television, beaming programmes like Baywatch and The Bold and the Beautiful in to millions of ordinary mofussil towns and villages, has made vast numbers of Indians aware for the first time of how the other half lives, inevitably generating resentment that others are enjoying a lifestyle that to them is totally inaccessible. An Inspector General of Police told me that towards the end of the 1980s, as satellite dishes and cable began to reach the remoter parts of his state, the crime in his area rose exponentially. The poor had become aware for the first time of what they were missing.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“But I thought Untouchability was outlawed at independence,’ I said. ‘Technically it was,’ replied Tyagi. ‘But do you know the saying “Dilli door ast”? It means “Delhi is far away.” The laws they pass in the Lok Sabha [Indian parliament] make little difference in these villages.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Yet it is far from impossible that the political revolution the Rajmata hopes to effect could in the long term change India from a tolerant secular democracy to some sort of ultra-nationalist Hindu state.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“But isn’t that all the more reason for you to stay in politics?’ I said. ‘If all the people with integrity were to resign, then of course the criminals will take over.’ ‘Today it is impossible to have integrity or honesty and to stay in politics in India,’ replied Suleiman. ‘The process you have to go through is so ugly, so awful, it cannot leave you untouched. Its nature is such that it corrodes, that it eats up all that is most precious and vital in the spirit. It acts like acid on one’s integrity and sincerity. You quickly find yourself doing something totally immoral, and you ask yourself: “What next?”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“As the writer Khushwant Singh has noted, "Nine tenths of the violence and unhappiness in this country derives from sexual repression.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“Hindu civilisation is the only great classical culture to survive intact from the ancient world, and at temples such as Madurai one can still catch glimpses of festivals and practices that were seen by Greek visitors to India long before the rise of ancient Rome. Indeed, it is only when you grasp the astonishing antiquity, and continuity, of Hinduism that you realise quite how miraculous is survival has been.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

“How did the Indian Army behave when it got to Hyderabad?’ I asked. ‘When an army invades any country – whether it’s Alexander the Great, Timur, Hitler or Mussolini – when it gets into a town, you know what the soldiery does. It’s very difficult for the officers to control them. I can’t tell you how many were raped or killed, but I saw the bodies of many. Old scores were paid off across the state.’ I”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters