You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

I've always been able to do what I wanted. On the other hand, my mother was. She considered the fact of being a woman a great disadvantage. She had her reasons. In her day women lived in seclusion - in almost all Indian states they couldn't even show themselves on the street.

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

You said, 'How is it possible for democracy to work with an illiterate people who are dying of hunger?' But with that people we made a democracy work.

A revolution is already taking place in India. Things are changing here already - peacefully and democratically. There's no danger of communism. There would be if we had a rightist government instead of mine.

If you only knew what it did to me to have lived in that house where the police were bursting in to take everyone away! I certainly didn't have a happy and serene childhood.

Popularity is not a gurantee of quality.