It depends on what you mean by the word religion. Certainly I don't go to temples and pray to the gods or anything like that.

[Mahatma Gandhi] said that the first president of India ought to be a harijan girl, an untouchable. He was so against the class system and the oppression of women that an untouchable woman became for him the epitome of purity and benediction.

In the Western world, women have no other choice. In India, no. And I'll explain the reason. It's a reason that also has to do with my own case. In India women have never been a hostile competition with men - even in the most distant past, every time a woman emerged as a leader, perhaps as a queen, the people accepted her. As something normal and not exceptional.

At no point, at a very important point: that of having convinced the Indians that they can do things.

I'm certainly not tired - work doesn't tire people, it's getting bored that's tiring.

It was the very fact that no one ever imposed anything on me or tried to impose himself on the others.

I began to associate with Mahatma Gandhi when he came and went in our house - together with my father and mother he was on the executive committee. After independence I worked with him a lot - in the period when there were the troubles between Hindus and Muslims, he assigned me to take care of the Muslims. To protect them.