Former US President Barack Obama has recently penned a book named “A Promised Land” that maps his 2008 presidential campaign and his first term at the White House. He talks about many things in it, including the raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Indian political leaders like Sonia Gandhi, Dr. Manmohan Singh, and Rahul Gandhi.
According to The Indian Express, he also outlines why India held a special place in his imagination even though he’d only first visited the country in 2010. Hindustan Times quoted him saying,
“Maybe it was its (India) sheer size, with one-sixth of the world’s population, an estimated two thousand distinct ethnic groups, and more than seven hundred languages spoken.”
NDTV quoted him adding,
“Maybe it was because I’d spent a part of my childhood in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu 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’d taught me to cook dahl and keema and turned me on to Bollywood movies.”
“More than anything, though, my fascination with India had to do with Mahatma Gandhi. Along with (Abraham) Lincoln, (Martin Luther) King, and (Nelson) Mandela, Gandhi had profoundly influenced my thinking.”
Did you know that the former president had such a strong Indian connection?