Obama said his fascination with India revolved around Mahatma Gandhi, whose “successful non-violent campaign against the British rule became a beacon for other dispossessed, marginalised groups”.
Former US President Barack Obama has said that his fascination with India largely revolved around Mahatma Gandhi, whose “successful non-violent campaign against the British rule became a beacon for other dispossessed, marginalised groups”. However, the 44th US president, in his latest book, rues that the Indian icon was unable to successfully address the caste system or prevent the partition of the county based on religion.
In his book “A Promised Land”, Barack Obama writes on his journey from the 2008 election campaign to the end of his first term with the daring Abbottabad (Pakistan) raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. “A Promised Land” is the first of two planned volumes. The first part hit bookstores globally on Tuesday. “More than anything, though, my fascination with India had to do with Mahatma Gandhi. Along with (Abraham) Lincoln, (Martin Luther) King, and (Nelson) Mandela, Gandhi had profoundly influenced my thinking, writes Obama, who had visited India twice as president.
“As a young man, I’d studied his writings and found him giving voice to some of my deepest instincts,” the former US president said. His notion of ‘satyagraha’, or devotion to truth, and the power of non-violent resistance to stir the conscience; his insistence on our common humanity and the essential oneness of all religions; and his belief in every society’s obligation, through its political, economic, and social arrangements, to recognise the equal worth and dignity of all people — each of these ideas resonated with me. Gandhi’s actions had stirred me even more than his words; he’d put his beliefs to the test by risking his life, going to prison, and throwing himself fully into the struggles of his people, Obama writes.
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