Just when you think you’ve achieved something, you realize you’ve achieved nothing. And still you have to go forward just the same – toward a dream so distant that your road has neither beginning nor end.
I have certain objectives. They’re the same objectives my father had to give people a higher standard of living, to do away with the cancer of poverty, to eliminate the consequences of economic backwardness.
Muslim women had to go out in purdah, that heavy sheet that covers even the eyes. Hindu women had to go out in the doli, a kind of closed sedan chair like a catafalque. My mother always told me about these things with bitterness and rage.
We always said that our struggle was not only against the British as representatives of colonialism, it was against all the evil that existed in India. The evil of the feudal system, the evil of the system based on caste, the evil of economic injustice.
Difficulties can’t be eliminated from life. Individuals will always have them, countries will always have them. The only thing is to accept them, if possible overcome them, otherwise to come to terms with them. It’s all right to fight, yes, but only when it’s possible.
