They said it in September

"The shortage of good teachers is really unfortunate. In the next five years, the government will focus and spend money on secondary education. At the same time, we need good teachers to make good use of this money. " -- M.A.A. Fatmi, Union minister of state for HRD, at a Teachers Day event organised by CBSE in Delhi (September 5)

"The purpose of punishment is to reform the guilty; punishments should never injure or insult any child. The teacher should not be perverted while disciplining the child." -- Basavaraj Horatti, Karnataka’s primary and secondary education minister, supporting corporal punishment (September 6)

"Lord Rama is an integral part of Indian culture and ethos and cannot be a matter of debate or subject matter of litigation in court. As Himalaya is Himalaya, Ganga is Ganga, Rama is Rama. It is a question of faith. There is no requirement of any proof to establish his existence based on faith." -- H.R. Bharadwaj, Union law minister on a controversial affidavit submitted by Archaeological Survey of India questioning the existence of Lord Rama (September 14)

"It was a mixed bag of emotions as the space station became my second home. But I was also missing the rain, the smell of ocean breeze, my family, friends and my dog." -- Astronaut Sunita Williams speaking to a group of school children in Ahmedabad on her six month NASA space mission (September 23)

"You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator… you are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated." -- Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, in a welcome address to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (September 25)

"It’s one thing to be publicly religious… quite another to declare that your country’s cricket eleven bats for international Islam." -- Cricket historian Mukul Kesavan on Pakistan cricket captain Shoaib Malik apologising to Muslims worldwide for losing to India in the Twenty20 World Cup finals (September 26)