There was a time when Africa and India were connected. It is now a well-known fact that continents go on shifting – they are not stable. You just cut out the maps of India and Africa and put them together and you will be surprised – they fit perfectly. The south of India fits perfectly with the lines of Africa. Some time in the past the land parted; Africa shifted away, over thousands of years.

South Indians are Negroid, their blood is connected with the Negroes; their skin is black, their language has no connection with Sanskrit at all. You will be surprised: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada – the four main languages of South India – have not a single word from Sanskrit, while Russian has forty percent, German has sixty percent, Lithuanian has seventy percent, English has thirty percent. French, Swedish – all the European languages originated predominantly from Sanskrit.

Naturally, South India does not want to be dominated by a Sanskrit-originated language, Hindi. They have no connection with it.

I told Seth Govindas, “These are simple facts. This country cannot have a national language. Just as Russian has no national language, the country can have only provincial languages. And it can use one language, for example English – because English is only understood by two percent of Indians, but those two percent of Indians are spread all over India, in every language group. So English remains a link language, not a national language, because two percent of the people speaking it cannot make it a national language. But it can become a link language.

“Every language has its own state, its own independence, so that it can grow independently without any pressure from any other language. There is no need for a national language, just a link language so that all these thirty languages don’t fall apart.” That’s how in Russia…Russian is only a link language. The same is the problem in Russia: thirty six languages, so widely apart – you cannot impose one language as the national language.

India is not a small country like England or Switzerland or France; it is a sub-continent. England can have one language, but a sub-continent cannot have one language. You cannot impose it – and for thirty years, forty years continuously, they have been trying. English remains the national language and there is no hope of an Indian national language ever.

I told that old man, “Just see the facts.”

But certainly politicians don’t have brains.

In India I knew many politicians, but I have not seen any brains in them.

Simple things that anybody will understand, things which don’t need great genius, politicians will miss. One of my friends was commander-in-chief of the Indian armies. When Pakistan invaded India, this man – his name was General Chaudhuri – asked permission of the prime minister to counter attack; it was needed, just being defensive would not help. That’s a simple military strategy: if you become defensive you are already defeated; the best way is to be aggressive.