101 Incredible India Quotes & India Instagram Caption Inspiration

Last Updated on: 18th March 2023, 11:07 pm

Looking for the best quotes about India? The country has inspired some beautiful quotes! From historians to novelists and everyone in between, it seems everyone has something to say about India. So whether you’re looking for quotes for Mumbai, Kerala, or Sikkim tourism, here are the perfect India quotes for India Instagram captions!

Read Next: 250 Inspirational Travel Quotes & Travel Instagram Captions

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The Best India Quotes & India Instagram Captions

Here are my favorite quotes about India, including inspiration from, poems, literature, pop culture, and quotes by famous Indian authors!

Beautiful India Travel Quotes

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. –Shashi Tharoor

To other countries, I may go as a tourist, but to India, I come as a pilgrim. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India! –Romaine Rolland

[India is] the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. –Mark Twain

India is not a country, but a home. –Khalid Masood

Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow. -Anita Desai

Time spent in India has an extraordinary effect on one. It acts as a barrier that makes the rest of the world seem unreal. –Tahir Shah

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One… I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds. –The Bhagavad Gita

There are three trips you take to India: the one you think you’re going to have – that you plan for; the one you actually have; and the one you live through once you go back home. –Erin Reese

These stories always take us to some faraway places which we can never visit in real life. –Viraj J. Mahajan

India teaches me again and again, that the categories into which I try to divide things don’t hold up. –Dena Moes

This is indeed India!… The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday’s bear date with the modering antiquities for the rest of nations-the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined. –Mark Twain

India will reveal to you the places in your heart that must be purified. –Erin Reese

India, she now knew, would not be content staying in the background, was nobody’s wallpaper, insisted in interjecting itself into everyone’s life, meddling with it, twisting it, molding it beyond recognition. India, she had found out, was a place of political intrigue and economic corruption, a place occupied by real people with their incessantly human needs, desires, ambitions, and aspirations, and not the exotic, spiritual, mysterious entity that was a creation of the Western imagination. –Thrity Umrigar

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear and merge into something else. –E.M. Forster

Everything is recycled in India, even dreams. –Shashi Tharoor

In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it. –Tahir Shah

What is harder to do is breaking the ties to the people, the places, and the version of me that will linger. –Ranjani Rao

In this city, every deserted street corner conceals a crowd. It appears in a minute when something disrupts the way in which the world is supposed to work. It can disappear almost as instantaneously. –Jerry Pinto

India lives in several centuries at the same time. –Arundhati Roy

The world is the body and India is its life. –Khalid Masood

If I would be given a chance to rewrite the dictionary, I would flip through the pages so quick and would replace India with, the land where beauty is redefined in itself, kindness has been touched, warmth has been spread and emotions has been felt. –Magith Noohukhan

Don’t we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while? –Elizabeth Gilbert

The World is my home and India is my living room. I’m independent in my living room to explore, hoping someday I will also be able to explore my own home. –Bikram Mahata

People allow India to exist only in two versions: In the first, everything is too beautiful to be encapsulated, women are swarthy and hippy, shoeless boys play soccer in dirt roads, elephants roam the streets, and temples are merely there for your enjoyment. In the second, India is a country lurching forward awkwardly, suffering a rape epidemic, incapable of a feminist movement or proper health care, a place where people s*** and p*** in the streets, where the caste system has ruined entire generations, where poverty is so rampant and depressing that you’ll hardly make it out with your soul intact, where your IT center is based, a place just close enough to Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan to be scary, but stable enough to be fun and exotic. Because, boy, isn’t the food good, and aren’t the landmarks something, and hasn’t everyone there figured out a kind of profound meditative inner peace that we should all learn from? Like all things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. A place, any place, can be beautiful and perfect and damaged and dangerous at the same time. –Scaachi Koul

I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realize my good fortune and would never again forget it. –Tahir Shah

What is now in the past was once in the future. -Ramachandra Guha

In the countryside, he heard horns and drums and followed the sound to a temple of granite and marble set in a compound that included shrines and incense stalls, people squatting against the walls, beggars, touts, flower-sellers, those who watch over your shoes for a couple of weightless coins. –Don DeLillo

India – a land where the last thing one needs to bother with is looking good. In India – at least in the circles I moved in – it’s natural to look beautiful by the smile in your heart and the way you move through the world. –Erin Reese

I do not want India to be an economic superpower. I want India to be a happy country. –J.R.D. Tata

His youth carried his words and lit the room with optimism. “India is like our home,” he said, “our spiritual home. Even before we get here there was that feeling.” –Richard Payment

Waking up in India is like waking up to life itself. –Reymond Page

In India, everything has a use and a value. –Tahir Shah

Be as intellectual as you like about it, but India is brilliantly mad. And if you want to love it, you have to hate it first. –Simon Dring

With me and India it’s all about leaving and returning. Madras is home. It’s a very complicated relationship. When you are away too long you get homesick, and when you are there too long you are sick of home. –Tishani Doshi

There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won’t go. For me, India is such a place. When I first visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colors, smells, tastes, and sounds. It was as if all my life I had been seeing the world in black and white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant technicolor. -Keith Bellows

Calcutta’s the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat. –Tahir Shah

To me, India’s always represented ‘everything’; it represents ‘all.’ Everything is here. You can stay here forever, and you’ll never feel like you’ve missed out on life. -Chris Martin

If you live on the river, befriend the crocodile. -Indian Proverb

Funny Quotes About India

Everywhere we walked we got plenty of attention due to the camera and sound men. The locals love to get on camera. I’d seen footage of Gandhi surrounded like this and always thought it was because he was very popular, but now I wonder if it was just because he had a camera crew with him. –Karl Pilkington

I probably did too much thinking in India. I blame it on the roads, for they were superb. –Robert Edison Fulton Jr

Living in a small town [in India] was like living in a glass house! –Mallika Nawal

India is the only country wherein the total number of engineers exceeds the number of vehicles on the road. –Nipun Varma

India is a place where color is doubly bright. Pinks that scald your eyes, blues you could drown in. –Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Quotes about Indian Food

Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets. –Gregory David Roberts

Indian food is like classical music raga- it takes time to build up to a crescendo. –Shobhaa De

Before enlightenment, cornflakes and coffee. After enlightenment, cornflakes and coffee. –Dena Moes

Kerala’s food evolved from the diverse people who traversed this land. The story of Kerala is closely linked to the story of the world’s eagerness for spices. Because of the wealth this land possessed, people of various countries,
religions and races arrived, for trade. Flourishing commerce translated into an enthusiastic reception for those who could conduct business competently. Which, in turn, opened up avenues for new religions and communities. Eventually, colonization spelt an end to the hospitality, but it also gave rise to the strong ethos of Malayali-ness that now marks this land. –Theresa Varghese

Quotes About Indian People & Culture

‎No people whose word for ‘yesterday’ is the same as their word for ‘tomorrow’ can be said to have a firm grip on the time. –Salman Rushdie

I do not want that our loyalty as Indians should be in the slightest way affected by any competitive loyalty whether that loyalty arises out of our religion, out of our culture or out of our language. I want all people to be Indians first, Indian last and nothing else but Indians. –Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

The designation of wife in India, of the Hindu wife, is higher and grander than that of Empress. She is called Devi. –Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

In India God is full of gods. –Khalid Masood

In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood. –Shashi Tharoor

Marriage: In India a fact. In other parts of the world an obsession. –Khalid Masood

You can take the Indian out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the Indian. –Amit Kalantri

India has many customs and rituals that may seem bizarre to anyone not used to its distinctive culture. It is a strange combination of being a young nation as well as an ancient country. –Hanadi Falki

If Indian weddings for Indian people are the furthest from “fun,” trips to India for Indian people are the furthest from “vacation.” When I told my friends about the upcoming trip, everyone purred about what a great time I’d have, told me to take a lot of photos, told me to eat everything. But if you’re going to India to see your family, you’re not going to relax, you’re not going to have a nice time. No, you’re going so you can touch the very last of your bloodline, to say hello to the new ones and goodbye to the older ones, since who knows when you’ll visit again. You are working. –Scaachi Koul

India has two million gods and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire. -Mark Twain

When the land of snake charmers begins charming the world, the credit goes to its People, its Youth. –Vivek Narayan Sharma

If America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast. –Shashi Tharoor

So all you desi boys and girls, dark skin or not, you are beautiful just the way you are. No need to change your skin to be fair and white. And no need to adapt to one’s culture to fit in. If you feel uncomfortable to do what other people are doing, then don’t do it! –Simi Sunny

Amma and i went to each house to tell them we were leaving. They all said, ‘Don’t forget us. Keep visiting.’ At the age I was then, this seemed absurd. i had grown up among them – how was it even possible to forget these people? Now I see what they meant. –Vivek Shanbhag

Until she went with him to India the first time after they were married. Then it all made sense, and she realized that the hospitality he displayed to all guests was larger than he was – it was cultural, hereditary, something coded into his DNA. –Thrity Umrigar

India was and to some extent, still is, a nation where its citizens care more about their religious freedom than any other earthly possession. Give them food or not, it doesn’t matter to them, as long as they are allowed to practice their religion. But, take away their religion, they will fight till the last breath of their life. –Abhijit Naskar

I am an Indian and we celebrate all festivals in every region of every religion. That is why it is called Incredible India! –Vinayak Muraleedharan

All over India, all over the world, as the sun or the shadow of darkness moves from east to west, the call to prayer moves with it, and people kneel down in a wave to pray to God. Five waves each day – one for each namaaz – ripple across the globe from longitude to longitude. The component elements change direction, like iron filings near a magnet – towards the house of God in Mecca. –Vikram Seth

The best thing about India is the freedom that one enjoys here, which is also the worst thing about it. –Deepak Rana

In India, you’re taught that there are certain qualities that make you a divine human being. -Deepak Chopra

Quotes About the Weather in India

Rains are an act of God in India. And God, as we know, is a law unto himself. He is not responsible, neither is He accountable. That is the essence of God: He gives with two hands and takes away with eight more. Why else would Indian gods and goddesses have several pairs of hands? –Kiran Nagarkar

The monsoons were the real thing; they dissolved things to the bone. –Anjum Hasan

I felt the kind of peace you feel when you come in from a hot afternoon and pour cold water over your feet. –Sachin Kundalkar

Where are the coconut trees bowing allegiance to the wind, the wide-open spaces, the verdant green fields? –Renita D’Silva

I like the evening in India, the one magic moment when the sun balances on the rim of the world, and the hush descends, and ten thousand civil servants drift homeward on a river of bicycles, brooding on the Lord Krishna and the cost of living. –James Cameron

To know India and her peoples, one has to know the monsoon. one has to know the monsoon. It is not enough to read about it in books, or see it on the cinema screen, or hear someone talk about it. It has to be a personal experience because nothing short of living through it can fully convey all it means to a people for whom it is not only the source of life but also their most exciting impact with nature. –Khushwant Singh

I listen to the sound of India’s voices for the last time. Laughter ripples like water. A prayer is a single note held long. There is so much life here. And too much death. I feel a soft breeze caress my face and I look up. An orange ribbon is floating through the air. In India, it’s easy to see the wind. –Cathy Ostlere

Quotes About Indian History & Politics

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India. -Max Mueller

India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay. –Shashi Tharoor

In India, I found a race of mortals living upon the Earth, but not adhering to it, inhabiting cities, but not being fixed to them, possessing everything, but possessed by nothing. –Apollonius Tyanaeus

India is a country for all but not a country for sale. Greedy politicians and greedy businessmen should aware of it. –Dr. Sivakumar Gowder

India is not a nation, nor a country. It is a subcontinent of nationalities. –Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest. –Mahatma Gandhi

It is the intense spirituality of India, and not any great political structure or social organization that it has developed, that has enabled it to resist the ravages of time and the accidents of history. –Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. –Albert Einstein

This great Mughal Emperor [Akbar] was illiterate; he could neither read nor write. However, that had not stopped Akbar from cultivating the acquaintance of the most learned and cultured poets, authors, musicians, and architects of the time – relying solely on his remarkable memory during conversations with them. –Indu Sundaresan

She was like some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously. –Jawaharlal Nehru

So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God. –Salman Rushdie

I do not look to history to absolve my country of the need to do things right today. I seek to understand the wrongs of yesterday, both to grasp what has brought us to our present reality and to understand the past for itself. –Shashi Tharoor

The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organized religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests. –Jawaharlal Nehru

India has left indelible imprints on one-fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. She has the right to reclaim … her place amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of humanity. From Persia to the Chinese sea, from the icy regions of Siberia to the Islands of Java and Borneo, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales, and her civilization! -Sylvia Levi

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will. -Jawaharlal Nehru

Love Travel Quotes?

I’m a little obsessed with travel quotes. If you are too, check out this massive guide to 250 Inspirational Travel Quotes & Travel Instagram Captions, plus:

• 25 Gorgeous Indonesia Quotes & Indonesia Instagram Captions
• 21 Lovely Quotes about Nepal & Beautiful Nepal Instagram Captions
• 21 Beautiful Bali Quotes & Bali Instagram Caption Inspiration

5 Things to Pack for Your Trip to India

The Lonely Planet India guidebook. It can be kind of a pain to find the major guidebooks once you land, or you’ll find them overpriced. I always like to pick mine up ahead of time.

An Unlocked Cell Phone so that you can use a local sim card while here to help navigate public transportation and when you’re on the road. 

Backup Charging Bank for your cell phone since you’ll be using it as a camera, GPS system, and general travel genie.

A Camera since India is super photogenic. I use a mix of my Nikon D810 and my  Samsung8 smartphone these days.

A Great Day Bag so you can carry what you need with you (like your camera, snacks, water, sunscreen, cash, etc). My current favorite is the Pacsafe Citysafe, which is especially great for India because it has many anti-theft features designed to deter pickpockets. 

Don’t Forget About Travel Insurance!

Before you leave for India make sure you have a valid Travel Insurance Policy because accidents happen on the road. I pay for World Nomads, and I happily recommend them. It’s especially important to get travel insurance if you’ll be hanging enjoying time in India’s cities. My friend Chris had his iPhone stolen in Mumbai, but luckily he was able to claim it on his travel insurance. 

I have been a paying customer of World Nomads for travel insurance for three years, and I happily recommend them.  If you get sick, injured, or have your stuff stolen, you’ll be happy to have the ability to pay for your medical bills or replace what’s stolen or broken.

Pin this guide to the Best Quotes about India & India Instagram Captions for Your Trip!