Thought Citations

The teacher asked us to write an essay based on an artist's visual version of the cold and other hardships endured by Washington's men at Valley Forge. I dashed off a page or so of commentary, which brought from the teacher public commendation for my historical empathy and perception. This juvenile effort may have influenced my instructor when he gave me a grade on my report card of 100 percent in

history. I thought then, and still think, that no pupil is worth 100 percent in history.

Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about

India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe. In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow willhave to solve a puzzle:

what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange andgrotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists and

corruption is rampant. If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of Europeanculture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkersin Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defendingundesirable and immoral practices.

Of course there is our Buddha andour Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have butone task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible.

If there is any party in the State which, by its traditions and its history, is entitled to put in the forefront of its work and its programme the betterment of the conditions of life of the working classes, it is our party. (Hear, hear.) We were fighting the battle of the factory hand long before he had a vote; and when the Liberals were tied up in the shackles of laissez faire we were speaking

in favour of the combination of working men, long before the Liberals had thought of the subject. It is more than 50 years ago that Disraeli was calling the attention of the country to housing and health questions, and they mocked him with the policy of sewage. The sanitation, or let me say the spiritual sanitation, of our people should have the first call on the historic Tory Party. It is just in

the measure as we can convince the country, by the service we give the country, that we are as genuinely interested in these questions and as generally prepared to sacrifice ourselves in solving these questions as any member of the Labour Party, that the country will trust us and that the country will return us again into power.

When I was a boy I knew the Odes of Horace backwards and forwards, and when I came to manhood year by year those odes came knocking at the door of my heart at the most unexpected times and places. So, even if you do not realise it now, the time will come when you will be thankful that you were steeped in Shakespeare as boys. In him we not only have, as Sir Gerald du Maurier said here not long ago,

perhaps the greatest man the world has ever seen, but one who had a profound knowledge of human nature and of the world. Shakespeare was one of those few poets in whom we find the magic which comes straight from heaven, and which is the prerogative of the very greatest…Shakespeare's plays, no matter of what country he may be writing, are redolent of our own soil and of our own country people.

The habit of thought and the outlook of Shakespeare's country people and of those wise men, Shakespeare's fools, may be found to-day in our rural counties.

The critics have no historical sense. I have no Cabinet papers by me and do not want to trust my memory. But recall the Fulham election, the Peace Ballot, Singapore, sanctions, Malta. The English will only learn by example. When I first heard of Hitler, when Ribbentrop came to see me, I thought they were all crazy. I think I brought Ramsay and Simon to meet Ribbentrop. Remember that Ramsay's

health was breaking up in the last two years. He had lost his nerve in the House in the last year. I had to take all the important speeches. The moment he went I prepared for a General Election and got a bigger majority for re-armament. No power on earth could have got re-armament without a General Election except by a big split. Simon was inefficient. I had to lead the House and keep the machine

together with those Labour fellows.

Had they ever thought of the parallel in the origins of Mohammedanism and Bolshevism—both springing out of Christianity, one proclaiming brotherhood and the other communism, but both proclaiming death and damnation upon all unbelievers. Within a century of the death of the prophet the Mohammedans had spread from Arabia to the Pyrenees by means of the sword and were stopped by Charles Martel at

Tours. Russia throws up few great men but imagine what might happen if a Bolsehvik Peter the Great appeared on the scene.