[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.

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

When you look at the beginning of the actual war, it's not hard to recognize that the Pakistanis were the ones to attack.

In fact the communists gained strength in India when the people thought my party was moving to the right. And they were correct.

The future doesn't frighten me, even if it threatens to be full of other difficulties.

Do you know that, until recently, poor people brought children into the world for the sole purpose of making use of them? But how can you change, by force or all of a sudden, an age-old habit? The only way is to plan births, by one means or another.

Poverty assumes so many aspects here in India. There aren't only the poor that you see in the cities, there are the poor among the tribes, the poor who live in the forest, the poor who live on the mountains. Should we ignore them as long as the poor in the cities are better off? And better off with reference to what? To what people wanted ten years ago? Then it seemed like so much. Today it's no longer so much.