Being the Other Quotes

“A puerile simplicity was sought to be imposed on a subcontinent of great complexity.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“Why have our politicians, power-brokers, ordinary citizens, failed to reach out, to bridge the divide between Hindus and Muslims.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“Secularism was still invoked even though it was a declining ideal, having been much profaned.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“During the Mughal period, India’s GDP was 25 per cent of the world’s collective GDP. By 1900, under the British, it had plummeted to 1.6 per cent.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“This, at a time, when there was a taboo on bathing in Europe. Composer Mozart had died at thirty-six because of this taboo.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“This tribal movement into Kashmir was criminal folly. And it must have been well organized. Mr Jinnah, Lord Mountbatten assured me, was waiting at Abbottabad, ready to drive in triumph to Srinagar if it succeeded. It was a thoroughly evil affair. By contrast, India’s policy towards Kashmir, and the Princely States generally, had throughout been ‘impeccable’.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“Here is a signal that heightened communalism is no longer a guarantee of positive election results.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“Vajpayee did not have to look over his shoulder, Manmohan Singh did.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“The establishment placed him on such a high pedestal that a great deal about Nehru was never openly discussed”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“it was Islam’s interaction with an older civilization that resulted in Dara Shikoh, Rahim, Kabir, Amir Khusro, Raskhan, Nazeer Akbarabadi, Ghalib and Anis.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“A basic rule of thumb was: culture came from Persia, Islamism from Arabia.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“Allah mian hamray bhaiyya ka diyo Nandlal (Oh my Allah, bestow on my brother a son like Lord Krishna.)”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“Their faith was Islam but the culture they exuded had strands in it which were Hindu, not in a religious sense but in its broader cultural connotations.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“I tried to avoid the term ‘secular’ where I could, because the word had been profaned too often.”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India

“Being the Other is also a lament for the vanished syncretic Hindu–Muslim culture”
― Saeed Naqvi, Being the Other: The Muslim in India