A politician, author, diplomat and a serving Member Of Parliament, Shashi Tharoor is one of the most popular and followed public figures in India today. While being a subject of memes and pop-culture due to his extremely eloquent English speaking and writing, Shashi Tharoor has also earned respect for his writings on national issues, the heritage of India and speeches condemning the colonialism. Shashi Tharoor quotes over the years gives you an insight of his take on colonialism, history, nationalism and the idea of India.
Also read: 30 Powerful Narendra Modi Quotes That’ll Inspire Every Indian
We bring you some of the most powerful Shashi Tharoor quotes over the years.
1. India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, & made me who I am. India matters to me and I would like to matter to India. – Shashi Tharoor
2. Of Britian’s war debt of 3 Bn pounds, 1.25 Billion was owed to India and never actually paid. – Shashi Tharoor
3. Western dictionaries define secularism as absence of religion but Indian secularism does not mean irreligiousness. It means profusion of religions. – Shashi Tharoor
4. Indians paid, in other words, for the privilege of being conquered by the British. – Shashi Tharoor
5. Dissent, is like a Gurkha’s ‘khukri’, once it emerges form its sheath it must draw blood before it can be put away again. – Shashi Tharoor
7. India has been born and reborn scores of times, and it will be reborn again. India is forever, and India is forever being made. – Shashi Tharoor
8. The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans. – Shashi Tharoor
9. The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts. – Shashi Tharoor
10. India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay. – Shashi Tharoor
11. We all have multiple identities in India; we are all minorities in India. Our heterogeneity is definitional. – Shashi Tharoor
12. Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy — and it is also the open window embedded in those bricks. – Shashi Tharoor
13. No wonder the sun never set on the British Empire, because even God could not trust the English in the dark! – Shashi Tharoor
14. In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood. – Shashi Tharoor
15. The past is not necessarily a guide to the future, but it does partly help explain the present. – Shashi Tharoor
16. There is, in short no end to the story of life. There are merely pauses. The end is the arbitrary intervention of the teller, but there can be no finality about the choice. Today’s end is, after all tomorrow’s beginning. – Shashi Tharoor
17. No Indian nationalist leader ever needed to say: We have created India; now all we need to do is to create Indians. – Shashi Tharoor
18. It’s not the side of the bigger army that wins. It’s the country that tells a better story. – Shashi Tharoor
19. Britain came to one of the richest countries in the world & reduced it after 200 years of plunder to one of the poorest. – Shashi Tharoor
20. There is not a thing as the wrong place, or the wrong time. We are where we are at the only time we have. Perhaps it’s where we’re meant to be. – Shashi Tharoor
21. The joke is that one Bengali is a poet, two Bengalis is an argument, three Bengalis is a political party. – Shashi Tharoor
22. To speak of Hindu fundamentalism, is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals. – Shashi Tharoor
23. Ultimately, what matters in determining the validity of a nation is the will of its inhabitants to live and strive together. – Shashi Tharoor
24. Diplomacy is much like the ‘lovemaking of elephants’, which is accompanied with a lot of bellowing and other sound effects, but no one can be sure of the consequences for at least the next two years – Shashi Tharoor
25. Many countries have built railways & roads without having had to be colonized in order to do so. – Shashi Tharoor
26. On Gandhi: Don’t ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with is feet on he ground. – Shashi Tharoor
27. As an Indian, I find it far easier to forgive than to forget. – Shashi Tharoor
28. India imposes no procrustean exactions on its citizens: you can be many things and one thing
29. To be an Indian Hindu is to be part of an elusive dream all share, a dream that fills our minds with sounds, words, flavours from many sources that we cannot easily identify. – Shashi Tharoor
30. If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali – a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix withthe next but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast. – Shashi Tharoor
Also read: 15 Pranab Mukherjee Quotes About His Vision & Idea Of India
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