If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.

As for the job of prime minister, I like it, yes. But no more than I've liked other work that I've done as an adult.

I remember harrowing episodes. People who emigrated, people who didn't want to emigrate...Many Muslims didn't want to leave India to go to live in Pakistan, but the propaganda was that there they'd have greater opportunities and so they left. Many Hindus, on the other hand, didn't want to stay in Pakistan, but they had ties there or property and so they stayed.

Nothing lasts forever, and no one can predict what will happen to me in the near or distant future.

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.

A lot of mythology arose after [Mahatma Gandhi] death. But the fact remains that he was an exceptional man, terribly intelligent, with tremendous intuition for people, and a great instinct for what was right.

My children needed me, and I like my job as a social worker.