Gurcharan Das Quotes & Sayings

Customs inspectors could not stop the export of software through telephone lines; labour inspectors could not stop software engineers from talking to customers in America at night; excise inspectors could not harass the IT firms because the government did not levy tax on services. Much like Gurgaon, India's knowledge economy literally grew at night when the government slept. — Gurcharan Das

One should never do to another what one regards as injurious to oneself. This, in brief, is the law of dharma. - Mahabharata XVIII.113.8 — Gurcharan Das

So when Yudhishthira tells Draupadi that eventually human acts do bear fruit, even though the fruit is invisible,56 one might interpret 'fruit' to mean the building of character through repeated actions. Yudhishthira was certainly aware that repeated actions had a way of changing one's inclinations to act in a certain way. That inclination is character. — Gurcharan Das

Good intentions are useless in the absence of common sense. - JAMI, BAHARISTAN — Gurcharan Das

By deceiving Drona, Yudhishthira corrupts his teacher's relationship with the world. So do we every time we lie - we corrupt the 'other' in the same way. — Gurcharan Das

Dharma is precisely this 'discipline of ordered existence', a 'belief system that restrains and gives coherence to desires. — Gurcharan Das

Commerce they say, encourages the bourgeois virtues of thrift, hard work,self -reliance,and self discipline. — Gurcharan Das

Modern India is a product of Hindu tradition, the religion of Islam, and Western civilization. — Gurcharan Das

When ordinary human beings err, it is sad, but when leaders do, it haunts us for generations. — Gurcharan Das

beyond their right - and now they would be made to pay for it. Envy was being acted out, as never before.'62 It led to the murder of six million Jews in the Second World War. Today, I find envy laced through the statements of European and Indian intellectuals about America. Arundhati Roy's essay after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington is an example. Like many anti-American intellectuals writing in the days after the attack, Roy claimed that it was the direct result of American foreign policy - the implication being that America somehow deserved what had happened. There is widespread anti-American sentiment in the world which regards the United States as arrogant, indifferent to human suffering, consumerist, and contemptuous of international law. Much of this is probably correct, but I find that some of it is inspired by envy of America's success. — Gurcharan Das

What sort of ideas, I wondered, might help to give meaning to life when one is in the midst of fundamentalist persons of all kinds who believe that they have a monopoly on truth and some are even willing to kill to prove that? — Gurcharan Das

Sleeping in the park in a city is a form of civilization. First, you need a city with enough bustle and clatter to make a person yearn for a calm, green spot. Then you need a first-class park, — Gurcharan Das

Despite the many occasions when its characters feel frustrated before the weight of circumstances, and despite blaming their feeling of impotence on daiva, 'fate', moral autonomy shines through in the epic. Because they have some freedom to choose they can be praised when they follow dharma or blamed when they follow adharma. At the moment of making a decision they become conscious of their freedom, and it is this perception of autonomy that gives them the ability to lead authentic moral lives. — Gurcharan Das

Its own position veers towards the pragmatic evolutionary principle of reciprocal altruism: adopt a friendly face to the world but do not allow yourself to be exploited. — Gurcharan Das

Dharma is easiest to spot by its absence: the Mahabharata employs the pedagogical technique of teaching about dharma via its opposite, adharma — Gurcharan Das

When individuals blunder, it is unfortuante and their families go down. When rulers fail, it is a national tragedy — Gurcharan Das

Yudhishthira answers Yaksha's question - what is man? by saying, 'The repute of a good deed touches heaven and earth; one is called a man as long as his repute lasts. — Gurcharan Das