Annie Besant on Hinduism

“Make no mistake. Without Hinduism, India has no future. Hinduism is the soil into which India's roots are struck, and torn out of that she will inevitably wither, as a tree torn out from its place. Many are the religions and many the races which are flourishing in India, but none of them stretches back into the far dawn of her past, nor is necessary for her endurance as a nation. Every one might pass away as they came, and India would still remain. But let Hinduism vanish, and what is she? A “geographical expression," of the past, a dim memory of а perished glory. Her history, her literature, her art, her monuments, all have Hinduism written across them.”

“That is the India of which I have to speak — the India which, as I said, is to me the Holy Land. For those who, though born for this life in a Western land and clad in a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their true mother — they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past, must dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination ; for they are bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past ; and with her, too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a future which they know they will share with her who is their true mother in the soul-life.”