Ever since the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Muslim world has been in slow decline relative to the west. With Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the creeping British annexation of Muslim India, that decline took on a malign aspect.
I do think that my Indian classical audiences thought I was sacrificing them through working with George; I became known as the 'fifth Beatle.' In India, they thought I was mad.
We've gone from the image of India as land of fakirs lying on beds of nails, and snake charmers with the Indian rope trick, to the image of India as a land of mathematical geniuses, computer wizards, software gurus.
Even in India the Hindi film industry might be the best known but there are movies made in other regional languages in India, be it Tamil or Bengali. Those experiences too are different from the ones in Bombay.
My mother came from India to go to the University of California, Berkeley.
Old people have a much better time in India because they're respected.
In defence, 'Make in India' is happening in a big way, and it is not happening without orders coming from the ministry.
I still say Pakistan and India should have normal bilateral relations in cricket and there should be regular exchanges between the two countries.
In India, it's tough to shoot a period film outdoors. You cannot find mud roads without wires, signage and billboards with ads of mobile phones even in rural areas.
Chennai is the birthplace of a new language in cinema. The audiences here are the most evolved moviegoers to be found anywhere in India.
The destruction of India's village system was the greatest of England's blunders.
That generation of Germans, along with volunteers from Denmark, Holland, even England and the Free India division and so on, we Europeans were alert and awake to the danger of Bolshevism.
A majority of my blind students at the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs in Trivandrum, India, a branch of Braille Without Borders, came from the developing world: Madagascar, Colombia, Tibet, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal and India.
When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey's avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state's sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment.
I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.
The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.
Britons are good, though often brutal, colonists where they come into relations with entirely uncivilized tribes whose past is so remote as to be forgotten. But they trample with their heavy boots over the sensitive, delicate susceptibilities of an ancient, highly civilized and cultured nation, such as India.
What India is doing in promoting technology and broadband access and PCs for the population is an important market for us.
So many people from the West are coming into India, all the studios have come into India, and they're making films here, whether that's Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, everyone. That stands as testament for us, so why are we afraid of sharing our talent with the world? We must.
There is still a severe and scary amount of extreme poverty in rural parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and sub-Saharan Africa.