Until the day she died, my mother continued to fight for the rights of women. She joined all the women's movements of the time; she stirred up a lot of revolts. She was a great woman, a great figure. Women today would like her immensely.

Politics is the art of acquiring, holding, and wielding power.

You've never been very generous, you Westerners, toward us Indians. You should have seen that things were changing, albeit slowly. You should have seen that something was happening. Not much, but something.

The civil servant is primarily the master of the short-term solution.

You must also understand us - always undervalued, underestimated, not believed. Even when we believed, you didn't believe us. You said, 'How is it possible to fight without violence?' But without violence we obtained freedom.

The Western press has always insisted that India was Pakistan's enemy and vice versa, that the Hindus were against the Muslims and vice versa. They've never said, for instance, that my party has been fighting this attitude ever since we have maintained that religious hostilities are wrong and absurd, that minorities cannot be eliminated from a country, that people of different religions must live together.

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