Former United States President Barack Obama said that he has always had a special place for India because of his childhood years spent in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu stories of the Ramayana and Mahābhārata.
“Perhaps it was its size (of India), with one sixth of the world’s population, an estimated two thousand distinct ethnic groups, and more than seven hundred languages spoken,” Obama writes of his fascination with India in his latest book ‘A Promised land’.
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Obama says he had never been to India before his 2010 presidential visit, but that the country “always held a special place in my imagination.”
“Maybe it was because I had spent a part of my childhood in Indonesia listening to the Hindu epic tales of the Ramayana and Mahābhārata, or because of my interest in Eastern religions, or because of a group of Pakistani and Indian college friends that taught me how to cook dahl. and keema and got me excited about Bollywood movies, ”Obama writes.
In “A Promised Land,” Obama recounts his journey from the 2008 election campaign to the end of his first term with the daring raid of Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. “A Promised Land” is the first of two planned volumes. The first part hit bookstores around the world on Tuesday.
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