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" Indian classical music was born when time barely existed. It developed further within the structures of royal courts and a system of patronage where the ruler or the feudal master determined all. "

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" I am fully aware of the concept of political revolutions. After all, that is what we hoped might happen in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, but what actually happened was capitalist restoration. "

Tariq Ali

Aware

I Am

Political

" The only continent where social movements have led to political parties that have pushed through serious social and political reforms is in South America. "

" In 1962, President Kennedy expanded an earlier trade embargo put in place by a predecessor, President Eisenhower, to a total economic blockade, which pushed the Cubans further in Moscow's direction. "

" As long as the Pentagon bankrolls the Pakistan army to fight its wars, and NATO troops remain in Afghanistan, there will be quarrels, charges of infidelity, a reduction in the household allowance, perhaps a separation - but a divorce? Never. "

" Scandinavia was awash with Maoism in the '70s. Sweden had Maoist groups with a combined membership and periphery of several thousand members, but it was Norway where Maoism became a genuine popular force and hegemonic in the culture. "

" In January 1961, the United States severed diplomatic relations in response to Cuban nationalisation of U.S.-owned sugar plantations, banks and businesses. "

" I think democracy is on the decline in the West. Ruling parties are the same: neo-liberalism at home and wars abroad. "

" In times of crisis, the incumbent suffers. And the bigger the crisis, the greater the punishment inflicted on those in power unless they do something that makes a change. "

" In the calculus of western interests, there is no suffering, whatever its scale, which cannot be justified. Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis are of little importance. "

" To dissociate politicians from capitalists is slightly disingenuous, to put it mildly. U.S. lawmakers are competitive and auction themselves to the highest bidder via the lobby system. "

" I was never totally what we would now call 'politically correct,' even in my most militant phase. I always liked good food, good wines. I suppose it was because I had total confidence in myself. "

" In the Seventies, we still had dreams and hopes of Utopia, but by the end of the decade, the world had shifted to the right. "

" Ralph Miliband was a socialist intellectual of great integrity. He belonged to a generation of socialists formed by the Russian revolution and the Second World War, a generation that dominated left-wing politics for almost a century. "

" Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office. "

" As a political current, Maoism was always weak in Britain, confined largely to students from Asia, Africa and Latin America. "

" In some ways, the '60s were a reaction to the '50s and the intensity of the Cold War. "

" The Greek city-states politicised citizen and subject, creating institutions that were way ahead of anything in China or India. The politicians of antiquity exercised a political and military, if not economic, hegemony on the culture as a whole. The idea of democracy was first born and practised here. "

" For India, the links with the United States/Israel are the centrepiece of its foreign policy. "

" A storm swept the world in 1968. It started in Vietnam, then blew across Asia, crossing the sea and the mountains to Europe and beyond. A brutal war waged by the U.S. against a poor southeast Asian country was seen every night on television. "

" Socially, the Cuban revolution created an education system and health service that remain the envy of much of the neo-liberal world. "

" The genealogy of fictional characters can become an obsession, like train-spotting, and should be firmly resisted. "

Tariq Ali

Become

Characters

" I don't regret what I did in the Sixties. I was young and took myself terribly seriously. In the Seventies, I spent too much time in inner-party factional disputes. "

" Revolutionaries are not infallible. "

Tariq Ali

Infallible

Revolutionaries

" Young women and men who joined the far-left groups did so for the best of reasons. They wanted to change the world. Many fought against the stifling atmosphere in many groups. "

" The human voice deployed to recite the Vedas and later aid the temple dancers was paramount before any instruments emerged. "

" The Lumiere brothers first exhibited moving pictures in Paris in 1896. A year later, there was a private showing at the Yildiz palace in Istanbul. "

" Anthony Powell was the most European of 20th-century British novelists. "

" When Pakistan was carved out of India's rib in 1947, it was assumed by some that Bollywood's Muslim stars would defect to the new state and thus boost the Lahore film industry. But Lollywood did not happen. "

" History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away. "

Tariq Ali

Never

Away

" I am not insulted by billions of Christians, Muslims and Jews believing there is a God and praying to this nonexistent deity on a regular basis. "