Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States. (File)
Strong points
- Obama says he never visited India before his presidential visit in 2010
- India “has always held a special place in my imagination”, he says
- He made the revelation in “A Promised Land”, his new book
Washington:
Former US President Barack Obama said he has always held a special place for India because of his childhood years spent in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
“Perhaps that was its size (of India), with one sixth of the world‘s population, about two thousand distinct ethnic groups and over seven hundred languages spoken,” Obama writes of his fascination with India in his last book. A promised land ”.
Obama said he had never been to India before his presidential visit in 2010, but that the country had “always held a special place in my imagination.”
“Maybe it was because I had spent part of my childhood in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of Ramayana and 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 dal and keema and turned me to Bollywood movies,’ Obama writes.
In “A Promised Land”, Obama recounts his journey from the 2008 election campaign to the end of his first term with the daring raid on Abbottabad (Pakistan) that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
“A Promised Land” is the first of two planned volumes. The first part was published Tuesday in bookstores around the world.
