“As my father [Javāharlāl Nehrū] said, you have to keep an open mind, but you have to pour something into it – otherwise ideas slip away like sand between your fingers.”

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.

I don’t mind if my life goes in the service of the nation. If I die, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation.

You don’t help a country by supporting a military regime that denies any sign of democracy, and what defeated Pakistan was its military regime.

I learned very soon to get along by myself.

I cannot understand how anyone can be an Indian and not be proud.

When it’s impossible, it’s better to stoop to compromise, without resisting and without complaining. People who complain are selfish.

There is not love where there is no will.

My father was a saint. I’m not.

It is our duty to create a social milieu in which the young and the socially weak feel that the present and future belong to them.

The old need the company of the young so that they renew their contact with life.

To become capable, one must have faith in oneself.

It’s not right to say that my father influenced me more than others, and I wouldn’t be able to say whether my personality was formed more by my father or my mother or the Mahatma [Gandhi] or the friends who were with us.

To be a mother, a housewife, never cost me any sacrifice – I savored every minute of those years.

Every new experience brings its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision.

In all communities you find groups that behave badly. But you must understand them too.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

It’s hard to say a favorite song of my father’s. I listen to all his stuff; a lot of the old stuff before the ’70s.

When I win awards, I think of my father.

The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you’re unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker’s family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

I have no mother here; I have a bearer. Jah is my mother, and Jah is my father.

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.

If my father was alive to hear that, he’d turn over in his grave.

I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which, was that you can fail at what you don’t want so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.