People who say it was her father who prepared her for the post of prime minister, it was her father who launched her, are wrong.

We have believed - and we do believe now - that freedom is indivisible, that peace is indivisible, that economic prosperity is indivisible

Everything I've done, I've done because I wanted to do it. In doing it, I've plunged in headlong, always believing in it.

No one wanted that marriage, no one. Even Mahatma Gandhi wasn't happy about it. As for my father...it's not true that he opposed it, as people say, but he wasn't eager for it. I suppose because the fathers of only daughters would prefer to see them get married as late as possible.

I don't know how to put on an act; I always show myself for what I am, in whatever mood I'm in.

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.

I went back into politics only when it was clear that things weren't going as they should have in my party. I was always arguing, I argued with everyone - with my father, with the leaders I had known since I was a child...and one day, it was in 1955, one of them exclaimed, 'You do nothing but criticize! If you think you can correct things, correct them. Go ahead, why don't you try?' Well, I could never resist a challenge, so I tried.