For me the only point that has remained unchanged through the years is that in India there is still so much poverty.

America always thought it was helping Pakistan. But if it hadn't helped Pakistan, Pakistan would have been a stronger country.

Women sometimes go too far, it's true. But it's only when you go too far that others listen.

I always defended my father, as a child, and I think I'm still defending him - his policies at least. Oh, he wasn't at all a politician, in no sense of the word. He was sustained in his work only by a blind faith in India - he was preoccupied in such an obsessive way by the future of India. We understood each other.

Whether when I was a child and fought the British in the Monkey brigade, or when I was a girl and wanted to have children, or when I was a woman and devoted myself to my father, making my husband angry. Each time I stayed involved all the way in my decision, and took the consequences. Even if I was fighting for things that didn't concern India.

[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.

It's true that I refused foreign aid. It's true. It wasn't my personal decision, however - it was the whole country that said no.