‘I spent part of my childhood listening to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata’: Barack Obama


By: Express Web Desk | New Delhi |

Updated: November 17, 2020 6:10:41 pm





Barack Obama, Barack Obama's book, Barack Obama's Ramayana and Mahabharata, Obama on India in his book, World News, Indian ExpressA Promised Land is the first of two planned volumes. The first part hit bookstores around the world on Tuesday.

Although he had never been to India before his presidential visit in 2010, former US President Barack Obama’s fascination with the country dates back to his childhood years, when he listened to the Hindu epics: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. India also held a special place for Obama because of Mahatma Gandhi, whose “successful non-violent campaign against the British government became a beacon for other marginalized and dispossessed groups.”

Obama has said this in his memoir, “A Promised Land,” the first volume of which hits bookstores Tuesday.

“Perhaps it was its enormous size (of India), with one sixth of the world’s population, about two thousand different ethnic groups and more than seven hundred languages ​​spoken,” Obama says.

Read also | Obama in his memoirs: “(Dr. Singh) seemed fragile … I was wondering what would happen when he left office”

In the book, which recounts his journey from the 2008 election campaign to the end of his first term with the raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Obama said that India “has always had a special place in my imagination. “

“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 I was excited about Bollywood movies, ”writes Obama.

On Gandhi, Obama writes that the nonviolent campaign of the Indian freedom fighter for independence from Great Britain not only helped to defeat an empire and liberate much of the subcontinent, but also unleashed a moral charge that beat across the world. world.

“However, more than anything else, my fascination for India had to do with Mahatma Gandhi. Along with (Abraham) Lincoln, (Martin Luther) King and (Nelson) Mandela, Gandhi had profoundly influenced my thinking, ”he writes.

In his memoirs, Obama also mentioned that the then prime minister Manmohan Singh had resisted calls to retaliate against Pakistan after the 11/26 attacks, “but his moderation had cost him politically”.

“He feared that the growing anti-Muslim sentiment had strengthened the influence of India’s main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In times of uncertainty, Mr. President, “said the prime minister,” the call for religious and ethnic solidarity can be intoxicating. And it’s not that difficult for politicians to exploit that, in India or anywhere else, ”Obama wrote of the conversation.

Obama said he found Singh “wise, thoughtful and scrupulously honest.” “In fact, she owed her position to Sonia Gandhi … more than one political observer believed that she had chosen Singh precisely because, as an elderly Sikh with no national political base, he posed no threat to her forty-year-old son, Rahul, whom he was preparing to take over the Congress Party, ”he writes.

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