World Leaders Biography

Big rivers and in fertile valleys where food and water were abundant. Their big cities were on the banks of the rivers. You may have heard the names of some of these famous old cities. In Mesopotamia, there were Babylon and Nineveh and Assur. But all of these have long ceased to exist and people sometimes find remains of the cities if they dig deep enough in the sand or earth. In thousands of years, they were covered up completely by sand and earth and no trace of them could be seen. In some places, new cities were built right on top of the old ones which were covered up. People who have been trying to find out about these old cities have had to dig deep, and sometimes they have found several cities one on top of the other. Of course, they did not exist like this at the same time. One city probably existed for hundreds of years and people lived in it and died, and their children and children's children lived and died. Gradually, the city became deserted and fewer people lived...

A little later I had my first encounter with conscience and duty. Being an only child, I liked to play by myself but I had to have my mother within my range of vision and hearing. One evening she had a visitor, a relative returning from Paris who had brought an exquisite embroidered dress for me. Mummy smilingly returned it saying that we now wore only handspun and handwoven material, khadi. The visitor could not understand this, and glancing at my mother's clothes - the only khadi available then was thick and rough as sacking - she could not help noticing that wherever her skin had rubbed against the sari it had become sore and red. She burst out, "l think you have all gone mad but you are an adult, and if you want to be ill, I suppose it is your business, but you certainly have no right to make the child suffer and I have brought this gift for her." "Come here, Indu," called my mother. "Aunty has brought you a foreign frock. It is very pretty and you ca...

We must concern ourselves not only with the kind of world we want but also with what kind of a man should inhabit it. Surely we do not desire a society divided into those who condition and those who are conditioned. And in this perspective, women may have a special role to play. It has often been said that the level of any society should be judged by the level of its women. It is certainly true that a country's progress can be measured by the progress of its womenfolk. But we have to think carefully about the meaning of ' progress." My father had a pet quotation about women, it was written some 20 years ago not about India, but I think it is largely true of the Indian woman: "She lives in her own time, in the rhythm of her own history which does not quite keep time with the clock of the twentieth century." Women should have equality in wages and such matters. They must have better services and conditions of work and living, etc… I believe in the lib...

In September 1971 I visited Moscow and then in October I undertook a three-week official tour of European countries to tell people there, that if they had any influence on the Pakistanis, they should try and get them to act more reasonably. It is then that I met Mairaux again. He was a very remarkable man and delightful to talk to. We discussed so ma Lim then and even later when he came to India, he was not at all well , but for a man of his age and health, his enthusiasm and his passionate feeling for freedom, were something which one should associate with youth. And that he did not just talk about it but he wanted to be brave, and wanted to do something, however small, made a deep impression on me. I had no doubt in my mind that the Bangladeshis would win their freedom. Not the slightest doubt. The only question was when would it happen and which side of the fence would we be on... If only for geographical reasons, we couldn't afford to be on the wrong side. Besides, if the...

It is interesting to recall how the press in India and abroad reported this most eventful day: Mrs. Gandhi is the second woman in history to hold the office of Prime Minister. The first was Mrs. Sirimavo Bandarnaike of Ceylon. "As Mrs. Gandhi left the hall of Parliament building where the election had taken place, crowds showered her with flower petals. She kissed many women Members of Parliament, including her aunt, Mrs. Vijayalakshmi Pandit. Earlier, one of the women members had pinned on her shawl a red rosebud like those her father, India's first Prime Minister, always wore in his buttonhole. "Security men had to link arms to save Mrs. Gandhi from being knocked over as she passed through the cheering crowds. Many people were pushed into empty ornamental pools. "Mrs. Gandhi began her day with a pilgrimage to the shrines of Indian Independence. Early in the morning, she visited the cremation sites of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru and the monuments raised...

AS FOR THE FUTURE OF INDIA, WHAT IS THE POINT IN prophetizing. We all s have ideas about our children; some arents do all they can to force their children to develop in a particular way. But they cannot.' This also applies to one's country. No matter what one wants and what one does for it, it develops in its own way. Its development is influenced by whatever is happening and also by the trends of the ordinary people. I should not waste time foretelling India's future. I have been brought up to feel that India is a special place. It does not mean that the people are better, more moral or more spiritual than other people; but I think that, in spite of a great deal of hypocrisy, they have aimed at certain ideals which other countries have jettisoned. These ideals also feature in other religions but people and governments pay little attention. In India, our ideals have mattered, even though nothing may have been done about them. They were there, at the back — not of eve...

What a world of difference there is between hearing and seeing from the outside and the actual experience. No one who has not been in prison for any length of time can ever visualize the numbness of spirit that can creep over one when, as Oscar Wilde writes: "Each day is like a year, a year whose days are long." When day after day is wrapped in sameness, spite and deliberate humiliation. As Pethick-Lawrence said: "The essential fact in the life of the prisoner is that he takes on a subhuman status. Herded together like animals, devoid of dignity of privacy, debarred not only from outside company or news but from all beauty and colour, softness and grace, the ground, the walls, everything around us was mud coloured and so became our jail-washed clothes. Even our food tasted gritty. Through the barred apertures we were exposed to the loo (hot summer wind) and dust storms, the monsoon downpour and the winter cold. Others had an interview and letter once or twice a mo...