November 18, 2020 6:32:00 pm
Obama said that Gandhi is “like a student eager to impress the teacher, but without the aptitude and passion to master the subject.” (Photo: Twitter / @ RahulGandhi)
Former US President Barack Obama’s latest memoir, ‘A Promise Land’ caused repercussions across India even before it hit bookstores on Tuesday. His unflattering first impression of Congressional Leader Rahul Gandhi and his admiration and respect for former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sparked a social media storm last week, with several prominent leaders weighing in on Obama’s comments.
The book, which is the first of two volumes, traces Obama’s political career to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. It also includes a vivid description of his first visit to India in 2010 and his growing concern over “divisive nationalism. promoted by the BJP ”. The former president has also written about how Mahatma Gandhi, along with Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln, influenced his thinking.
“I have never been to India before. But the country has always had a special place in my imagination, “Obama wrote. “Maybe it was because I spent a part of my childhood in Indonesia listening to the Hindu epic tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, or because of my interest in Eastern religions, or because of a group of Pakistani and Indian college friends who taught me how to cook dahl and keema and got me excited about Bollywood movies. “
Here’s everything Obama said about India in his memoirs
Rahul Gandhi has ‘a nervous and reportless quality about him’
Describing his first interaction with the leader of Congress, Rahul Gandhi, Obama said that “he looked smart and serious, his good looks resembled his mother’s.” Gandhi spoke about his thoughts on the “future of progressive politics” and asked Obama about his experience in the presidential campaign in 2008.
But he added there was a “nervous and reportless quality about him.” “As if I were a student who had done coursework and was eager to impress the teacher, but deep down lacked the aptitude or passion to master the subject,” Obama wrote.
Sonia Gandhi’s power ‘attributable to cunning and forceful intelligence’
In his memoirs, Obama widely praised the beauty of the president of Congress, Sonia Gandhi. “We are told about the beauty of men like Charlie Crist and Rahm Emanuel, but not about the beauty of women, except in one or two cases, as in the case of Sonia Gandhi,” he wrote.
He described her as a “striking woman in her sixties, dressed in a traditional sari, with piercing dark eyes and a calm and regal presence.”
Commenting on her role in defending Gandhi’s legacy, she added: “That she, a former stay-at-home mother of European descent, had come out of her grief after her husband was killed by a separatist’s suicide bombing. from Sri Lanka in 1991 to become a prominent national politician testified to the enduring power of the family dynasty. “
“However, it became clear to me that his power was attributable to cunning and forceful intelligence,” he wrote.
Manmohan Singh was ‘wise, thoughtful and scrupulously honest’
Former President Obama said he was able to develop a warm and productive relationship with Manmohan Singh over the years. He lavished praise on the former prime minister, calling him a man of “uncommon wisdom and decency.”
“Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, meanwhile, had engineered the modernization of his nation’s economy,” Obama wrote. He said he found Singh to be “wise, thoughtful and scrupulously honest.”
Recalling his first visit to India in 2010, Obama said Singh had expressed his fears about the growing “anti-Muslim sentiment” that had strengthened the influence of the BJP. “’In times of uncertainty, Mr. President,’ said Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh), ‘the call for religious and ethnic solidarity can be intoxicating. And it’s not that difficult for politicians to exploit that, in India or elsewhere, ‘”he recalled.
Obama’s fears about the future of India
Obama called modern India a success story for surviving “repeated changes of government, bitter disputes within political parties, various armed separatist movements, and all kinds of corruption scandals.” But he pointed out that today’s India, which is plagued by inequality and violence, bore little resemblance to the society Gandhi had envisioned.
He expressed concern over the emergence of “BJP-promoted divisive nationalism” after Manmohan Singh’s term as prime minister was completed. “Would the baton be successfully passed to Rahul, fulfilling his mother’s destiny and preserving the congressional party’s grip on the divisive nationalism promoted by the BJP?” I ask.
His visit to India also made him question whether impulses for violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, racism and religious intolerance “were too strong for any democracy to permanently contain.”
“They seemed to lurk everywhere, ready to resurface whenever growth rates stagnated or demographics changed or a charismatic leader chose to ride the wave of people’s fears and resentments,” Obama wrote.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not mentioned in the first volume of Obama’s memoirs, he likely included his first impression of Modi in his later book.
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