The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts.

There’s no longer a superpower standoff. But there are real problems that divide countries around the world. And the UN is still the place where we can get together and try and discuss them.

In writing of Indian culture, I am highly conscious of my own subjectivity; arguably, there is more than one Indian culture, and certainly more than one view of Indian culture.

Terrorism is a principal preoccupation in most of our international contacts.

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. ... India matters to me and I would like to matter to India.

The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans.