We would rather starve than sell our national honor.

All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.

We always said that our struggle was not only against the British as representatives of colonialism, it was against all the evil that existed in India. The evil of the feudal system, the evil of the system based on caste, the evil of economic injustice.

You soon realize that the peak you've climbed was one of the lowest, that the mountain was part of a chain of mountains, that there are still so many, so many mountains to climb...And the more you climb, the more you want to climb - even though you're dead tired.

If by religion we mean a belief in humanity rather than the gods, an effort to make man better and a little happier, then yes, I'm very religious.

My father was prime minister, and to take care of his home, to be his hostess, automatically meant to have my hands in politics - to meet people, to know their games, their secrets.

I always defended my father, as a child, and I think I'm still defending him - his policies at least. Oh, he wasn't at all a politician, in no sense of the word. He was sustained in his work only by a blind faith in India - he was preoccupied in such an obsessive way by the future of India. We understood each other.