‘Manmohan Singh posed no threat to Rahul Gandhi’
Key points
- ‘Manmohan Singh posed no threat to Rahul Gandhi’
- ‘The power of Sonia Gandhi attributable to a cunning and forceful intelligence’
- ‘Dressed in a traditional sari, with dark, piercing eyes and a calm, regal presence’
New Delhi: The memoirs of former US President Barack Obama ‘The promised land’ He has created a stir around the world, including India, for his depiction of world leaders and their antiquities.
In India, the book caused quite a stir over Obama’s unflattering statement about former President of Congress Rahul Gandhi.
A new excerpt from the memoirs says that Sonia Gandhi chose Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister of India as he posed no threat to Rahul Gandhi.
‘Manmohan Singh posed no threat to his forty-year-old son’
“… More than one political observer believed that she (Sonia Gandhi) 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 she was grooming. to take over the Congress Party, ”Obama wrote.
The former US president also said Singh’s reluctance to retaliate against Pakistan after gunmen attacked the financial capital Mumbai proved to be politically costly for him.
“This restraint had cost him politically,” Obama writes.
He recalls how Manmohan Singh told him that the call for religious and ethnic solidarity can be intoxicating in times of uncertainty, adding that it is not that difficult for politicians to exploit that, in India or elsewhere.
‘Sonia’s power attributable to cunning and forceful intelligence’
Describing Singh as the “chief architect of India’s economic transformation” and as “wise, thoughtful and scrupulously honest”, Obama also recalled him as a “modest technocrat who had earned the trust of the people by not appealing to his passions but by provoking higher living standards and maintaining a well-earned reputation for not being corrupt ”
Speaking of Sonia Gandhi, he called her “a striking woman in her sixties, dressed in a traditional sari, with penetrating dark eyes and a calm, regal presence.”
During the dinner given in honor of the president of the United States, Obama recalled that Sonia Gandhi “listened more than he spoke” and was “careful to give in to Singh when political issues arose and, often, directed the conversation towards his son.”
“However, it became clear to me that his power was attributable to cunning and forceful intelligence,” he wrote.
