World Leaders Biography

When I arrived in South Africa the Africans said: We will arrange a reception for you in a hall. We will greet you and then you will speak. I said: Oh no, I am not going to say a single word, it is only on that condition that I should come. They were taken aback, because they had booked the hall and made all the arrangements. Eventually, they said that anyway I should sit on the dalS and that they would try and explain my silence somehow. All that morning — the reception was at 4 p.m. — I was taken to visit an area where African railway workers lived. The conditions were so terrible that I got worked up. At the reception, when it was announced that Miss Nehru wouldn't speak, I banged the table and said: "I do wish to speak." The poor chairman was startled, and before he could say anything. I came to the microphone. I don't remember what I said, but I was full of emotion. I must have spoken about the living conditions of the Bantus and others. It came out in the...

I can’t remember the date, but Mridula Sarabhai, a congresswoman and a family friend, told me that I was only about 7, 8 or 9, when I formed the children’s spinning group. I had asked Gandhiji how I could contribute to our struggle, and he suggested it. It was called Bal-Charkha Sangh and was in fact a children's section of the Gandhi Charkha Sangh, an organisation for hand-spinning; but so far as I can remember we didn't have charkhas, we had taklis. Until quite recently in fact, I still had a horribly thick handkerchief which I had spun and woven myself, and then sewn up afterwards. But now it is lost. Then, of course, I was much more involved in the 1930 movement, because I was old enough to understand what It was all about. I wanted to join the Congress Party and be a regular soldier of India, as my father said. But I was told I was too young to join, so, what was known as Vanar Sena (named after a story in the old Hindu epic, Ramayana) or Monkey Brigade was formed. i...