Yeh masjid hai yeh maikhana, taajub is per aata hai
Janabe-e-Shaikh ka naqsh-e-kadam yoon bhi hai aur yoon bhi
(Here is the mosque and there the tavern; What amazes me is to see
The imprints of the holy man's feet going from the one to the other.)
The Caste System is not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of labourers.
The India I love does not make the headlines. But I find it wherever I go — in field or forest, town or village, mountain or desert — and in the hearts and minds of people who have given me love and affection for the better part of a lifetime.
The Tamil slang for something free of charge, oasi, is derived from the abbreviation, OC, which expands to On Company's Service. The company in question was the British East India Company which stamped its official mail with these letters to avoid having to pay postage.
Ledikeni, a Gulab Jamun-like Bengali sweet, was named after Lady Canning, the popular wife of Governor General Canning. It is apparently a slightly larger version of the Pantua.
Griddhraj Parvat or Vulture Peak in Madhya Pradesh was the final destination of the classic Chinese epic, Journey to the West. Hieun Tsang and his companions travel from China to a temple on Vulture Peak to retrieve Buddhist sutras in order to enlighten their country.
Rabindranath Tagore's family name was actually Banerjee. Being Brahmins, the Tagore family's ancestors were referred to as 'Thakurmashai' or 'Holy Sir'. During the British rule, this name stuck and they began to be recognised as Thakur and eventually the family name got anglicised to Tagore.
In 1984, Indira Gandhi was not allowed to enter the temple of Lord Jagannath at Puri because she had married a Parsi, Feroze Gandhi.
Jawaharlal Nehru was a lapsed Hindu, who never entered a temple in adult life.
The 1998 series of Indonesian 20000 rupiah notes contain an image of Ganesha on the left along with that of former president, Sukarno.
Some Indian languages have chosen to name the planet Uranus, Prajapati, after the Hindu/Vedic Creator persona. Some prefer the term Harshal, an Indianisation of Herschel. Uranus was discovered by William Herschel in 1781 and named after the Greek god of the sky, father of the Titans, and grandfather of the Greek pantheon.